Tens of thousands of Puget Sound Energy customers were still without power Sunday as crews continued working toward full restoration.
As of late afternoon Sunday, about 21,800 customers were without power, five days after a deadly windstorm left more than a half-million customers in the dark. Many of the lingering outages were east of Lake Washington, near Issaquah, Renton and Sammamish.
Gerald Tracy, a spokesperson for Puget Sound Energy, said crews have been out “in full force” with more than 150 line crews and 70 tree crews working.
“We now have substations back in power and continue work on repairing distribution lines — the lines in neighborhoods,” Tracy said in an email Sunday. “Much of this work is time-consuming and slow-going as it requires extensive work and restores power in much smaller numbers.”
The utility company said crews have restored power to more than 96% of customers in a Sunday update. The last of the fixes are time-consuming and require restoring power for five, 10 or 20 customers at a time.
The Mirrormont and Hobart Valley areas were among the hit hardest by the bomb cyclone’s winds, as hundreds of trees fell into power lines. Specialized equipment is needed to remove the trees before line repairs can be made.
“We also continue to prioritize restoring outages that are impacting schools,” the update reads. “We’re confident that nearly all schools will have their power back on in time for the school day tomorrow and are proactively coordinating with schools so they can help plan.”
Puget Sound Energy has set up two resource hubs for customers to charge small devices, use Wi-Fi and get light snacks. The company is also hosting a warming center.
