High winds knocked out power and caused damage Tuesday, most of which was downed trees such as this one that also took out a sign at the Zip's restaurant in Cheney.
These two trees were lost on Erie Street between Elm and Cedar near Eastern Washington University's campus.
High winds ravaged most of Eastern Washington on Tuesday, knocking down fences and trees, tearing off roofs and leaving thousands without power, with many areas still dark Wednesday morning.
News service reports indicate almost 170,000 Avista Utility customers were out of power during the height of the storm, which took place late Tuesday afternoon. Numbers for Inland Power and Light customers were not available at press time Wednesday morning.
Power was knocked out in north Cheney and the Fish Lake area about mid-afternoon, with the entire city going dark just after 5:30 p.m. - leaving all of the nearly 5,600 Cheney Light customers without power.
"Every meter was out," Light Department Director Steve Boorman said.
Most of the city was back up Wednesday morning. Boorman praised the work of the Light Department crew for their response to the storm, and the city has done annually to clear power line right of ways of any trees, branches or brush that might fall and deny customers power.
"Our crews did a great job," he said. "A significant chunk of that (power outage) was transmission, which was out of our control."
The storm did result in two fatalities. A woman was killed on Spokane's South Hill when a tree fell on top of her near 14th and Walnut.
The other fatality occurred on State Route 904 when a tree fell onto the highway and on a car just south of Four Lakes, killing the female driver inside.
The storm brought sustained winds between 30 – 40 miles per hour, if not higher, along with some pretty intense gusts. The highest gust, according to the National Weather Service, was 137 mph at Mission Ridge Ski area near Chelan, which occurred at 6 p.m.
Closer to home, Spokane International Airport and Fairchild Air Force base recorded gusts of 71 mph, the former at 3:53 p.m. and the latter at 6:03 p.m. Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge reported a 56 mph gust at 5:28 p.m.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)