Wind and rain leave thousands in the dark

At its height, a storm left more than 114,000 Puget Sound Energy customers without power.

But that number dropped, with crews concentrating on the most hard-hit South King County.

A PSE crew has been hard at work in Federal Way. But by 6:30 p.m. Saturday, there was good news. The crew energized a line and wrapped up its work.

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Indeed, before that happened, there were five separate outages in Federal Way. So, it took a lot of work to get everyone back online.

This has been a familiar sight across south King County during the first major storm of the fall season.

Puget Sound Energy crews worked around the clock to restore power to tens of thousands of customers, sometimes doing the difficult work in the middle of downpours. The power for PSE customers began going out after 10 p.m. Friday.

In the Pine Lake neighborhood of Sammamish, a neighbor says she heard a loud boom, then darkness.

“I think it was from the corner,” said Jaime Daniel, “like the circuit box, something that’s on the corner of our cul-de-sac.”

But Daniel says her family is lucky, as she ran her hand along a machine humming loudly in her backyard.

“Have it serviced once a year, keep it in good condition,” she said. “It’s my baby.”

Her “baby” is a built-in automatic generator the previous owners installed before they moved in just two years ago.

“It’s probably come on for us about five, six times already in the two years we’ve been here,” said Daniel.

Moments later, the sky appeared to open up, rain coming down in sheets.

Then drivers saw a much rarer sight in the Pacific Northwest, several lightning strikes in a very short amount of time.

The ferocity of the much-needed rain probably caught a lot of people off guard.

But after the historically hot and dry summer of 2021, it was likely a very welcome sight.

Around 6:30 p.m., power was restored to all but 19,000 PSE customers. And the work will continue until power is restored to everyone.

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