Over 120,000 residents across King, Pierce and Snohomish County are without power this morning, thanks to freezing rain, toppled trees, and severed power lines.

But there’s more, via the Seattle Times:

As many as 90,000 customers of Puget Sound Energy were without electrical service this morning. Additional outages are likely, according to a PSE spokesman.

In the Tacoma area, an estimated 25,000 customers were without power.

Overnight, PSE had 10,000 customers without power and had restored service to 38,000, “but this morning it’s taking on a whole new picture,” said spokesman Roger Thompson.

What’s worse, the icy weather conditions are making it difficult for repair crews to get in and fix the damage.

Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row...

7 replies on “Freezing Rain and Power Outages”

  2. This is just depressing. All of the trees in my semi-forested ‘hood are being decimated. As the upper limbs succumb to the ice, they are taking everything below with them. Whole sides of 100 year old trees are stripped to the trunk.

  4. Power-wise, Seattle proper Is holding up pretty well (so far). The southern suburbs and Lake Forest Park are taking it in the shorts, however. Far south Beacon Hill isn’t pretty either.

    As for PSE, I wouldn’t know. They are the Cogswell Cogs to our Spacely Sprockets.

  7. You all take a moment and give thanks that you don’t have Pacific Gas & Electric, the energy supplier for Northern California. When I moved here from Seattle I couldn’t believe how crappy the system is here. These folks do no preventive maintenance at all, and it shows. Big chunks of their systems go down all the time. Hell, they couldn’t even keep the lights on at Candlestick park during a nationally broadcast Niner’s game recently. Not to mention their gas division letting their pipes get into such bad shape that they blew up a entire neighborhood not far from San Francisco a year or so ago. Give your utility workers up there a big thank you, not only for busting their butts during this storm, but for a doing a great job year round.

Comments are closed.