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.
________
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.
