PORT ANGELES — The cleanup and repairs from a damaging weekend wind storm continued Sunday for Olympic National Park, the state Department of Transportation and county public utility districts, and still more rain was forecast for the region.
High winds have ended, but rain will continue on and off through Wednesday, with 10 to 20 mph breezy winds, said Danny Mercer, National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle.
Olympic National Park roads and facilities at Staircase, Deer Park, Hurricane Ridge, Elwha, Sol Duc, Lake Crescent and Queets had reopened by Sunday afternoon.
The Mora, Lake Ozette, Hoh and Quinault roads and associated campgrounds remained closed because of fallen or leaning trees and broken branches that still posed a hazards after Saturday’s storm. Kalaloch Campground also remained closed.
Rangers hope to open the Hoh Valley Road, Hoh Campground, Ozette Campground and Kalaloch Campground by Monday afternoon.
Graves Creek Campground, the North Fork trailhead and Mora Campground may remain closed for additional days.
“The western portions of the park had the most significant winds and sustained the most significant damage,” said Rainey McKenna, spokeswoman for Olympic National Park.
The Mora Campground sustained damage, and Camp David Junior Road around Lake Crescent was closed to all but residents due to a minor landslide blocking one side of the road, McKenna said.
All campgrounds and roads in the eastern portion of the park had been cleared of hazards and reopened, she said.
During the storm, there were people trapped for several hours in the Hoh and Ozette park areas by fallen trees that blocked the roads out.
McKenna said she didn’t know how many people were trapped, but said park crews created a safe path out for their visitors after a few hours.
Four cars were damaged by falling trees Saturday, said Barb Maynes, spokeswoman for the park.
Three of the cars were damaged by a large tree that fell in the parking lot at Madison Falls on Olympic Hot Springs Road, and the other was parked at a lot for the Staircase hiking trail in Mason County, Maynes said.
There were no injuries at either location, and no injuries have been reported in any other part of the park, she said.
Maynes said the roof of one park building was damaged in the Lake Ozette area when a tree fell on it.
It was not yet known if there were any injuries among back country backpackers.
On Sunday, park rangers were hiking the trails and checking backcountry campgrounds for those who might have been injured during the storms, Maynes said.
There have been no reports of injured hikers, she said.
State Department of Transportation crews were kept busy with falling trees and branches on U.S. Highway 101 through Sunday.
“There is still weather in the area. The crews are moving place to place, and working as fast as they can,” said Cara Mitchell, spokeswoman for Transportation.
As fast as crews removed one fallen or partially fallen tree, another fell across a road or was found to be threatening to fall in another location, Mitchell said.
In some cases, power lines were involved, and the local power company must be called before the trees can be removed, she said.
As of Sunday evening, the highway was fully open after trees in the road were removed in the area of Ruby Beach in West Jefferson County.
Jefferson County PUD crews worked around the clock into Sunday to restore power to an estimated 60 percent of the county, or roughly to 12,000 customers, that lost power due to the powerful wind storm.
As of 5 p.m. on Sunday, 2,500 customers remained without power.
“We got pretty well hammered,” said Jim Parker, PUD general manager.
Some areas could be without power through Monday, Parker said.
Most Clallam County PUD customers’ power was restored by 4 p.m. Sunday, and the remaining 200 customers were expected to be online before this morning, said Mike Howe, Clallam PUD spokesman.
Howe said it had not yet been calculated how many customers had been without power during the storm and its aftermath.
Two West End festivals were interrupted by the storms, but swung back into motion as soon as the worst passed.
Windspeeds were clocked at 87 mph on the Pacific Coast at Destruction Island, 62 mph at the Quillayute State Airport, and 63 mph at a weather station near Beaver, according to the National Weather Service.
The weather station at the airport measured 1.9 inches of rain on Friday and Saturday, and another .07 inches on Sunday.
The worst of the storm passed by about 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
In Forks, the Hot Thunder Nite car show and community celebration Saturday was a success despite the blustery weather, said Lissy Andros, executive director of the Forks Chamber of Commerce.
“We had a great time. It was a packed house,” Andros said.
Many West End visitors stayed an extra night in Forks to avoid road closures, she said.
In Neah Bay, the worst of the wind storm hit just as the Makah Days Grand Parade was coming to an end, and one person was injured when a canoe was blown off of the roof of a van and landed on a person, said Crystal Hottowe, vice chairwoman of the Makah Days committee.
The injured person was treated for a broken rib and escaped more serious injuries, Hottowe said.
The Makah Tribal Council opened the Emergency Operations Center, revved up emergency generators and designated the Makah Community Gym as an emergency shelter.
The gym was one of the main venues for dances and other events, which were moved to other locations in Neah Bay, Hottowe said.
Visitors who were camping on or near beaches were moved to the gym for their safety and comfort and received a free meal, she said.
Hottowe said there was no major damage done to the village, but there was damage to vendor goods, and many vendors departed Neah Bay on Saturday instead of staying for Sunday’s events.
Makah Days events, including the carnival, returned to normal Sunday, she said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
OUR PREVIOUS REPORT:
By Jim Casey and Leah Leach
Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — Hurricane-force winds Saturday closed Olympic National Park, closed the Hood Canal Bridge for nearly two hours, interrupted the Port Townsend ferry run, closed roads and cut power to about 14,500 electrical customers.
Two deaths were reported elsewhere in the region-wide storm.
A man was killed when a tree fell on a car in Gig Harbor, The Seattle Times reported, and KIRO-TV said a 10-year-old girl was killed in Burien when she was struck by a tree branch blown off in the wind.
Winds had begun to die down on the North Olympic Peninsula by midafternoon, when about 3,000 of the estimated 12,000 customers who had lost power had the lights back on, according to Jim Parker, manager of the Jefferson County Public Utility District, which has about 18,500 electrical customers.
Those in remote areas, such as in the Coyle area, may have to wait for 48 hours to regain electrical power, Parker said.
About 2,500 Clallam County customers remained without power at 5 p.m., said Michael Howe, Clallam County PUD spokesman.
Some 1,500 West End customers lost power in the Neah Bay, LaPush and Hoko areas and locations south of Forks.
About 150 in Diamond Point had power restored by 5 p.m., but more outages were reported in Joyce and on Sequim Bay Road, Howe said.
The National Weather Service measured winds as high as 79 mph at Destruction Island off the Washington Coast near Kalaloch, with gusts of 81 mph in Rosario Strait, 69 mph at Hurricane Ridge, 43 mph at William R. Fairchild International Airport in Port Angeles and 40 mph at Sequim Valley Airport.
Winds remained as high as 49 mph at Destruction Island at 4 p.m. and 38 mph at Naval Air Station-Whidbey Island.
Roads into the park — and all the park’s campgrounds — were closed Saturday afternoon, with some campers’ vehicles stranded and others unable to return to their campsites beneath hundreds of downed or wind-weakened trees, according to park spokeswoman Barb Maynes.
Rangers would clear roads as soon as high winds abated, she said.
Park personnel were encouraging those campers who could leave to do so.
The park visitor center had inquiries about the closure, but the numbers were no greater than on other Saturdays, said Greg Marsh, a park ranger who supervises the center.
The Hood Canal Bridge was closed in both directions at 1:09 p.m. because of high winds and was reopened at 2:54 p.m., the state Department of Transportation said.
The Port Townsend-Coupeville ferry also remained out of service due to high winds and rough seas. Reservation holders will not be charged “no show” fees.
Myriad outages were reported throughout the Jefferson County PUD service area, hitting customers in Port Townsend, Marrowstone Island, Port Ludlow, Irondale, Cape George, Eaglemount, Chimacum, Quilcene and the Coyle Peninsula.
“It was pretty much the whole service area,” Parker said. “The wind hit everywhere.”
Traffic lights were out in Port Townsend, where many customers remained without electrical power by 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Restoration of power was spotty because of the nature of the outages, Parker said.
Trees fell on power lines, shorting out the lines in 15 to 20 major outages, along with several smaller outages.
It wasn’t clear by midafternoon exactly how many customers had lost power.
County emergency operations center spokeswoman Keppie Keplinger said about 60 percent of the county was without power at one point, “and it’s going to be a long time before power gets restored because there’s just so much damage.”
Crews were brought in from outside the county to help with power restoration.
The wind began at about 8:30 a.m. or 9 a.m., Parker said.
“It was calm, and then all of a sudden, it just starting coming in,” he said.
By 10 a.m., emergency dispatchers were fielding calls of downed power lines and fallen trees — some of them afire — on U.S. Highway 101 in Jefferson County and state Highways 20 and 104.
Highway 104 was closed in both directions at Milepost 5 but had been reopened by 1 p.m.
Fallen trees were caused traffic delays on state Highway 112 from Milepost 3 to Milepost 37, Transportation reported. Trees were cleared by 4:51 p.m.
One lane of U.S. Highway 101 was closed briefly near Ruby Beach Road in the park’s coastal strip. Fallen trees had blocked the southbound lane at Milepost 164 beginning at 11:02 a.m. The road was cleared by 12:57 p.m.
The storm also shut down air operations at the Paradise Fire in Olympic National Park, which was not expected to grow greatly during the storm because of recent rain and high humidity, said Brentwood Reid, public information officer for the fire.
The fire, burning through rainforest about 12 miles inside park boundaries in the Queets River valley, has covered 2,796 acres.
Crews had shifted their priority to assessing damage and reopening roads blocked by fallen trees as quickly as possible, Reid said.
The wind storm knocked out power to at least a quarter-million customers in Washington and Oregon.
Late August is unusually early for such a powerful storm, meteorologists said. Trees, already stressed by dry conditions, still have their leaves, which makes them more likely to fall when strong winds blow.
Crews working to restore power were taxed by the storm’s breadth, tearing trees out of the ground across a vast swatch of the Pacific Northwest.
“If it just hits one part of our service area, you can maybe send crews down from another area. But this is a service-area-wide event,” said Christina Donegan, a spokeswoman for Puget Sound Energy, which reported 140,000 customers without power midafternoon. The figure was expected to grow.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
Executive Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or at lleach@peninsuladailynews.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
