SEATTLE (AP) — High winds toppled trees and power lines across parts of Washington state and Idaho, killing one adult and critically injuring two children, knocking out power to thousands and compounding the damage already wrought by more than a week of heavy rains and flooding.
Wind gusts reaching up to 85 miles per hour battered Pullman, Washington and the Idaho cities of Moscow and Lewiston on Wednesday morning. More than half a million power customers were without power in Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon, according to the website Poweroutage.us. Colorado’s largest utility cut power to about 50,000 homes and businesses Wednesday to prevent downed power lines from starting wildfires.
A 55-year-old man died after a tree fell on his home in the northern Idaho town of Fernan, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s office said. The tree hit the bed where the man was sleeping, according to a press release, and other people inside the home escaped without serious injury.
In southern Idaho, the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s office said high winds caused several old, internally rotten trees to fall, knocking down power lines and critically injuring two children. Both children were under age 10, and were waiting for the school bus when the tree landed on them, the sheriff’s office wrote in a press release. An older sibling was also at the bus stop, but was uninjured. An air ambulance was able to land at the scene despite the increasing wind, the sheriff’s office said, and one child was flown to a nearby hospital while the other one was transported by ground ambulance.
Western Washington residents — many in communities already deluged by flooding — reported blown transformers, downed trees and power lines and damaged roofs in social media posts early Wednesday morning. Winds were expected to gust up to 90 mph (145 kph) along Colorado’s warm and dry Front Range, the region just east of the mountains where most of the state’s population lives. Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy cut power to the region to reduce the risk of wildfires, and said it would work as quickly as possible to restore power after winds are expected to die down in the evening.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said Tuesday the extent of damage is profound but unclear, and more high water, mudslides and power outages were in the forecast.
A barrage of storms from weather systems stretching across the Pacific has dumped close to 2 feet (0.6 meters) of rain in parts of the Cascade Mountains, swelling rivers far beyond their banks and prompting more than 600 rescues across 10 counties.
As of Tuesday, there had been only one flood-related death — of a man who drove past warning signs into a flooded area — but key highways were buried or washed out, entire communities had been inundated, and saturated levees had given way. It could be months before State Route 2, which connects cities in western Washington with the Stevens Pass ski area and the faux Bavarian tourist town of Leavenworth across the mountains, can be reopened, Ferguson said.
“We’re in for the long haul,” Ferguson said at a news conference. “If you get an evacuation order, for God’s sakes, follow it.”
It won’t be until after waters recede and landslide risk subsides that crews will be able to fully assess the damage, he said. The state and some counties are making several million dollars available to help people pay for hotels, groceries and other necessities, pending more extensive federal assistance that Ferguson and Washington’s congressional delegation expect to see approved.
According to the governor’s office, first responders had conducted at least 629 rescues and 572 assisted evacuations. As many as 100,000 people had been under evacuation orders at times, many of them in the flood plain of the Skagit River north of Seattle.
Elevated rivers and flood risk could persist until at least late this month, according to the National Weather Service.
Residents near a breached levee in Pacific, south of Seattle, were told to leave their homes well before dawn Tuesday, just hours after an evacuation alert was lifted for residents near another broken levee.