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[East Hill]

My power flickered off and on during the 14th, finally went out for good the evening of the 14th, amazingly came back on around 10.00 am on the 15th. All around us people were still without power until this morning. Many traffic signals still out, and exceedingly dangerous driving conditions due to drivers running the intersections.

I took a short run down to Big Soos Creek today, parts of it were flooded due to all the rain. Tree limbs down everywhere on the trail. I eventually came back and sigh, got back on the exercise bike. I'm really beginning to hate that thing.

No damage to the house, not even the creaky old fence blew over. Coming home from work we saw a lot of big trees uprooted, some in the Washington Memorial Park Cemetery, another one which had demolished some poor family's home along South 170th near 40th Avenue South.

We've been asked to check on the relatives of a friend. The relatives live in Gig Harbor. We'll be doing that a bit later, we just have to confirm that the Narrows Bridge is open.

So, I hope everyone will check in here and let us know if they are all right.

East Hill

[HipGnosis6]

Other than a horrible, horrible commute home on Thursday (and a not too great one into work on Friday morning) and a bunch of trash blown in to my stairwell, I had no problems with the storm. The power flickered a little but never went out.

And oh yeah, I work at an insurance company and we had over 600 homeowners claims in one day! That was a little nutty!

[East Hill]

Darn! And that's just from the people who have power. Wait until Monday or Tuesday when the rest of the 700,000 or so people get back their power. I know that our power came back on before the phone did. The Nextel phones at work are still screwed up from the power surges.

I'm glad to see you're ok, though. Get a lot of rest, you'll probably have a hectic week ahead.

East Hill

[Eden]

I think we are sheltered here on the back side of Capitol Hill. It was windy for sure, but nothing got blown over in our immediate vicinity. Plus we live about 1/4 of a block from the power sub station, so unless something happens down there or at our house we don't lose power. I think its only been out two or three times since we've moved here and it stayed on through this whole storm. The hubbby got an extra day off since over where he works in Issaquah the power was out. We went downtown yesterday and everything was in full swing there.
This morning I went out with his team and we did a loop down to Renton, out to May Valley, through Issaquah and back over via I-90. We saw a lot of branches down and a lot of outlying neighborhoods still had their power out. We had to climb over one blowdown over on Mercer Island, but otherwise it was actually a beautiful day to be out on the bike.

[Susan Otcenas]

AT 7am Friday morning, we had a phone call from the alarm company that monitors our TE warehouse. The alarms were going off - were we aware? Um, no. And the person who would normally be here at that hour was scheduled to be in later. We called her and sure enough, she wasn't at the office.

Soooo, we spent a very tense 45 minutes trying to get to the office. Traffic lights were out at major intersections so the roads were a mess. We got to the office and everything was fine. We discovered the alarms had been triggered by the power outtage (well, actually, by the power being restored). We lost power at the office at around 7 pm Thursday and it didn't come back until 7am Friday. Being without power stinks, but from a business standpoint we were very lucky! It didn't affect our ability to ship orders at all. (Big sigh of relief at this time of year!)

We were lucky AGAIN last night. A major power substation had a transformer blow within a few miles of the office. Once again, 50,000 people without power. But we were OK here. Our power flickered at home when the transformer blew, but we didn't lose power there either. Whew!

Hope everyone is safe and warm today!!

Susan

[East Hill]

I went down to my favourite place to ride yesterday, saw people walking along (even though red DANGER tape was strung up blocking the trail). I asked if the trail was all right, and was told that the downed trees had been removed the day before. So, I set off for the slowest ride I've ever made at Big Soos Creek! It was obvious that many trees had come down, the low lying part had again been flooded (although the water had receded). I had to shoulder the bike a couple of times to hoist it over some trees which had not been cleared further along the trail. I encountered some PSE folks who were looking for a downed power line. I let them know there was nothing down behind me. It turned out it was just a few hundred feet up the part of the trail I hadn't ridden yet, and I didn't see it because it was off the trail about 70 feet away . No sparking though.

I was back at my start point and encountered a woman who I have seen quite frequently. I asked her why she was starting so late, and she told me that it was hard for her to get motivated when it was so cold. She then asked me where I lived...it turned out that she was so cold because she STILL does not have power, and she was only a couple of miles away from me. So even yesterday, Sunday, there are people without power near to me. Yesterday my husband went over to Gig Harbor with a load of firewood for his niece's husband's grandparents. The niece was concerned about them because she had not been able to get hold of them on the phone. It turned out that they were very happy to see my husband with the load of firewood because they were still without power. 85 and 94 years old!

We still haven't heard from a number of people so I hope they are all right. I will have to keep an eye on the names at the bottom of the page to see if everyone appears...

East Hill