PORT HADLOCK — Hundreds of Jefferson County Public Utility District customers remained without power Sunday as crews slogged through a long list of damages to the county’s power lines caused by Thursday night’s storm.
About 20 small- and medium-scale power outages remained in Jefferson County as of Sunday morning, affecting an estimated 500 customers, said Bill Graham, PUD resource manager.
By 4 p.m. Sunday, the number of outages was down to 12. No estimate for the number of customers affected was available.
The largest areas that remained without power Sunday night were Lindsay Hill, south of Quilcene, two areas near Larson Lake and an area near Discovery Bay Golf Club.
Seven line crews — three from Jefferson, one from Mason County PUD No. 3, and three private crews — worked through the weekend to get as many power customers back on as possible, Graham said.
Most of them were expected to be returned to service by Sunday night, but a few may have to wait until today or possible Tuesday, he said.
A map of the remaining outages is available at www.jeffpud.org.
The National Weather Service clocked gusts of 70 mph Thursday in Port Townsend, winds that did widespread damage.
Rather than having one large section of damage that allowed crews to work efficiently, the damage is all over the map, Graham said.
He said priorities were public safety first, then those affecting larger numbers of customers and finally those with only one or two customers, he said.
There were more than a dozen poles damaged in the storm.
“Just one pole takes hours [to replace]. One of the poles just exploded,” he said.
Graham said the size of the trees that fell on power lines was much larger than the typical windfall trees.
“These were sizeable trees, 16 to 32 inches in diameter,” he said.
Those trees included leafless alders that came down, he said.
When the storm — the third of three storms that first inundated the area with rain then added the high winds — hit Thursday, the PUD had crews on standby.
After the storm arrived, it was apparent they would need more help, and crews dispatched to outages were often diverted to emergency calls, Graham said.
When the storm ended, calls went out for more help, he said.
Graham said PUDs have mutual aid agreements, similar to those used by police and fire departments.
Mason County responded by sending a crew, and Michaels Corporation, a transmission line construction company, also arrived to help, he said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
