Puget Sound Energy says over 150,000 people started Sunday without power.
More than 150,000 people across the Puget Sound region woke up without power Sunday morning after a powerful storm brought gusts of 60 miles per hour or more, toppling trees onto power lines and causing damage to properties.
By around 8 p.m. Sunday, Puget Sound Energy had restored power to more than 130,000 customers, bringing the number of those still without power down to 19,000.
“We’re working as quickly and safely as we can,” said Gerald Tracy, a PSE spokesperson. “Our crews are actively working to restore that.”
The hardest-hit areas are in Thurston and Pierce counties, as well as south King County and the foothills, where downed trees are blocking access for repair crews, according to Tracy.
The biggest challenge, Tracy said, is that transmission lines, the large power lines that cross the Cascades and carry energy from generation sources to substations, have been knocked down by falling trees.
“I would love to say that we’ll be back on by 5 p.m.,” Tracy said. “But with the amount of outages we have and with not just being one large outage, it’s really hard to put a time on that.”
How long it takes to restore power depends on the type of damage. If only distribution lines, the ones in neighborhoods, are affected, power could be back in a couple of hours. But if transmission lines in more remote, mountainous areas are down, restoration could potentially take days.
“It really just depends on a case-by-case basis,” Tracy said.
In Bonney Lake, the damage is everywhere. Douglas Glugover returned home Saturday night to find chaos. “You couldn’t get anywhere. Everything was closed. Logs across the road,” he said. When neighbors texted him a photo of the damage, Glugover thought his family would be displaced for days.
Now, a small generator, the only source of power at his home, buzzes constantly, powering two fridges and two freezers to keep food from spoiling.
In North Seattle, Trish Alexander heard a similar sound around 10:15 p.m. Saturday.
“Just a big crack and then the power went out,” she said. When she stepped outside, she found a massive flame tree had uprooted the sidewalk and crashed down on her car and her neighbor’s vehicle, taking down six power lines. Alexander is now the only person on her block without power, but cleanup has been slow. Tree removal crews told her they can’t begin work until PSE removes the downed power lines first.
PSE said it was about 92% done assessing the damage as of Sunday morning, and once that process is complete, restoration should accelerate.
The utility has more than 60 crews working on repairs, about 20 more than would typically respond to a storm, Tracy said.
“We have storms all the time up in the northwest,” he said. “When the wind happens and the rain saturates the soils, it does make it more likely for this to happen.”
For residents like Glugover, it’s become a waiting game. “I’m hoping these guys fix it today. If not, you know, cold shower and we’ll deal with it,” he said.
Alexander remains cautiously optimistic. “I’m still hoping to have power by the end of the day,” she said Sunday afternoon.
The 150,000 initial outages represent one of the more significant storm impacts in recent Puget Sound Energy history, with the scale suggesting widespread infrastructure damage rather than isolated incidents confined to specific neighborhoods.
The 60-mile-per-hour wind gusts exceed thresholds where tree failures become common, particularly in saturated soil conditions where root systems lose anchoring strength and even healthy trees topple under lateral wind loads.
The restoration of 130,000 customers by 8 p.m. Sunday demonstrates PSE’s ability to address distribution-level outages quickly, with the remaining 19,000 likely representing more complex transmission line repairs requiring specialized equipment and longer timelines.
Thurston and Pierce counties’ designation as hardest-hit areas reflects their geographic exposure to incoming storm systems from the southwest, with south-facing slopes and foothills catching the brunt of wind before terrain provides sheltering for central Puget Sound.
The transmission line failures crossing the Cascades create cascading impacts where single downed towers can affect thousands of customers simultaneously, compared to distribution line failures that typically impact dozens or hundreds of homes.
Douglas Glugover’s generator operation powering two fridges and two freezers illustrates the extended outage preparation wealthier households can afford, while families without generators face food spoilage and lack of heating during multi-day power losses.
Trish Alexander’s situation where she alone remains without power on her block demonstrates how tree damage locations create isolated outages requiring individual service drops, making her low priority compared to repairs restoring hundreds of customers simultaneously.
The coordination requirement between tree removal crews and PSE for downed power lines creates bureaucratic delays where neither party can proceed until the other completes preliminary work, extending restoration times for affected homeowners.
The 92% damage assessment completion by Sunday morning indicates PSE’s systematic approach to cataloging every outage location before dispatching repair crews, though residents experiencing outages want immediate action rather than methodical inventory.
The 60 repair crews deployed represent substantial mobilization including mutual aid from neighboring utilities, though the number remains modest compared to the geographic scope of damage across multiple counties requiring simultaneous attention.
