South End recovers from big snowstorm

Published 9:00 am Saturday, December 2, 2006

Warmer weather on Whidbey Wednesday spared the South End from a much-feared, second slamming of snow. Weather-weary residents returned to their normal routines as businesses and schools reopened on Thursday.

Electricity had been restored to most homes on South Whidbey by Thursday as the island shook off the frigid impacts of the worst snowstorm in a decade.

Local businesses, however, reported thousands of dollars in losses.

Road crews and repair crews for Puget Sound Energy struggled to get South Whidbey up and running after the snowstorm, which started Sunday evening and stretched for three days — leaving some areas buried under as much as a foot of snow.

Both road and power repair crews said they battled the elements to get the job done.

Through Wednesday morning, portions of Highway 525 were still icy. It seemed as if Highway 525 between Maxwelton Road and past Freeland to the north had been forgotten by road crews as the South End’s main thoroughfare was a bumpy stretch of unplowed ice and frozen slush.

Dustin Terpening, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said there were a number of reasons for the stubborn ice sheet on the highway.

“The South End got hit really hard by snow,” Terpening said.

He said the state department has two plows on Whidbey Island, and they were busy non-stop starting Sunday.

But with the large amount of snow and only two machines, it was hard to catch up, especially when crews where called by State Patrol or other agencies to provide help with emergencies or accidents.

“They’ve been a one-man band,” Terpening said.

Also, with rain falling just before it started snowing this week, crews were not able to put down anti-icer because it would have been washed right off the road.

Road conditions were a different story the further north one traveled. Highway 20 was mostly free of ice and snow.

Terpening also said while officially Highway 20 doesn’t have priority over Highway 525, in other areas choices are sometimes made between more rural roads and ones that are closer to population centers. For instance, I-5 is always the top priority highway for the state when it snows.

Other nearby areas also have more trucks; DOT had 85 plow trucks in the Northwest Region, which ranges from King to Whatcom counties and includes Island and San Juan counties.

Still, Terpening said local crews had plenty of sand and equipment at their disposal. To cover the 24-hour workload, crews were switched from 8-hour shifts to 12 hour-shifts.

Bill Oaks, Island County engineer, said his crews were working overtime as well.

“We had 70 folks out. Office staff was in trucks, the engineers did field work. The entire staff was out,” Oaks said.

The county’s public works department threw everything it had at clearing county roads.

“We typically don’t staff for a three-day snowstorm,” he said.

Every available truck — 13 trucks and eight plows — were busy on Whidbey Island.

Oaks said the county was ready, even though the storm came early and unexpected. He said the county also helped the city of Langley out with sand.

By Wednesday, all of South Whidbey’s county roads were cleared, except a blockage on Wells Road that was due to downed power lines, Oaks said.

He said the county has money in its budget for the giant clean-up effort, but if the weather stays severe throughout the winter, it may have to be adjusted to cover additional costs.

In Langley, the city’s three-person public works department tackled frozen sidewalks, icy roads and whatever else the snowstorm left behind.

“I am tremendously proud of our public works and police department,” said Mayor Neil Colburn. “The public works guys had three hours of sleep since the storm started.”

But even those who decided to stay off the roads were affected by the storm.

Some people were without electricity for up to four days. Hardest hit were residents in remote areas of South Whidbey between Maxwelton Road and Greenbank.

Repair crews have been out 24 hours a day since Sunday after noon.

At the peak of the crisis, about 10 teams plus tree-clearing crews worked on Whidbey Island, said Dennis Smedsrud, a Puget Sound Energy spokesman. The power outage followed an island-wide blackout that hit in mid-November after high winds raked over Whidbey.

“Getting to the areas was difficult,” Smedsrud said. “With the storm two weeks ago, Whidbey had a double whammy.”

Smedsrud said during the windstorm, 140,000 customers had lost power statewide for extended periods of time.

During the snowstorm only 45,000 lost power. Crews had a hard time making it to the locations without becoming storm victims themselves, though.

In Island County, crews had trouble making it on the islands from the mainland, and then to the locations where power was out. Once there, trees had to be cut and snow removed before work could finally begin.

Even though nearly three times more customers were left powerless by the windstorm, it took the crews much longer to tackle the snowstorm damage, Smedsrud said.

On the island about 5,000 people were without power.

Two main transmission lines were hit and countless individual lines went down, he said.

The problem was not the number of outages at any given time, but the never-ending stream of new damage caused by falling trees, Smedsrud said.

“We dealt with a fix and drop, fix and drop. As soon as we were done with one job, something else came up,” Smedsrud said.

With the recent rain, the ground was left soggy.

“We had three times the normal rainfall in November,” Smedsrud said.

Coupled with the weight of snow and the force of high winds, even healthy trees fell, he explained.

Smedsrud couldn’t provide cost estimates for the storm; costs from contract crews won’t come in until later.

“We don’t even have the numbers from the last windstorm yet,” he added.

Businesses affected

While residents continued to trade snow stories, businesses across the South End were still counting their losses at the end of the week.

Colburn, who is owner of Neil’s Clover Patch as well as Langley’s mayor, said the restaurant was closed for 2 1/2 days.

The restaurant lost money because it couldn’t be open, and like other businesses, that meant employees also didn’t get paid during the closure.

Due to the power outage, countless hamburger patties, meats and vegetables had to be thrown out.

“We threw away $1,500 to $2,000 worth of food,” Colburn said.

“It hurts all of us, the employers, the employees, the employers’ and employees’ families. Thank God it only happens once every 10 years,” he said.

Hazadorous driving conditions and the power failure hurt businesses all over the South End. Retail stores were closed for several days, and restaurants and grocery stores were forced to dump thousands of dollars worth of food that had spoiled during the power failure.

Gene Felton, owner of the Star Store and 3Cats Cafe, was busy on Wednesday cleaning up the results of the storm at his two grocery stores and restaurant.

“We threw away well over $4,000 in food from the Bayview store, more from the Langley store because it is larger,” Felton said.

“In Bayview we lost all our milk, ice cream and fresh meat and everything in our deli case,” he said. “We lost $5,300 worth of ice cream alone.”

With a generator at their Langley location, the Star Store was able to keep a small refrigerator and walk-in cooler powered up.

“But we were unable to keep our display cases up and running,” he said.

For employees of many business, workers felt the pain in their wallets.

The South End’s largest employer, Nichols Brothers Boat Builders in Freeland, was closed on Monday. It reopened with a partial crew on Tuesday and was back in full operation by Wednesday.

“It was rough, but we weathered the storm,” said Matt Nichols, chief executive officer of Nichols.

“We kept power throughout. We were closed on Monday because it was too hazardous for our employees to drive to work,” he said.

“By Tuesday were were operating at 50 percent capacity. The electricians, plumbers and painters were all working under cover. They were fine once we got them onboard the boats,” he said.

Sharon Hart, executive director of Island County Economic Development Council, said that while businesses were hard hit, it could have been worse.

“We are fortunate that this weather system happened on a midweek set of days, as those days would probably been much slower than Black Friday and the Thanksgiving holiday weekend for shopping,” Hart said.

“The weather probably did not affect the ‘Cyber Monday’ e-shopping,” Hart said.

Nationally, around 40 percent of most retailers do 40 percent of their business during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Shopping slows down during the early portion of this week since most people are back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Many stores, such as grocers and general merchandise stores, probably had a higher than normal number of people shopping to stock up for these weather emergencies, Hart added.

Some businesses stayed open every day, despite the snow.

Stephanie Linden and Jenna Dunsmore, baristas at the Jet Java coffee stand on Langley Road and Highway 525, were busy with a steady stream of customers on Monday.

But the ice-shrouded streets Tuesday morning were a different story. “It’s been very slow so far,” Linden said. “But those who do stop by are really in need of some good, hot coffee.”

Even so, most businesses were hit hard by the storm and were struggling to catch up with work late in the week.

“The weather — it was pretty hairy,” said UPS delivery man Mike Gerrodette.

While schools, Island Transit and other drivers had given up on hitting the road on Monday, Gerrodette and his fellow UPS delivery drivers on Whidbey Island went on their routes.

“The company gave us the liberty to make the call,” he said.

He said Monday through Wednesday all his packages were delivered except to those businesses that were closed and the shipment needed confirmation.

Still, Gerrodette had a 80- to 90-percent delivery rate.

His dedication came at a price.

In addition to his regular shift, he put in 2 1/2 to 3 hours of extra work every day.

Gerrodette said he took it slow — very slow at times — and still had a couple of close calls. His Freeland colleague was less lucky.

“One of the other drivers ended in a ditch,” he said. “But he got pulled out by a towing company.”

Cheryl Taylor delivers The South Whidbey Record and the Everett Herald. She, too, couldn’t be stopped by the winter conditions.

Usually her route takes her 2 1/2 hours.

“It took me six hours to deliver 100 papers,” Taylor said.

“It’s slick out there. People don’t blame me for the late paper. But they waited impatiently,” she said.

Some paper carriers from different companies traded their loads and helped each other out, Taylor said.

Some icy side roads or hills were simply not passable Wednesday and newspapers were delivered later in the week.

While the snowy scenery drew “oohs” from most everybody who ventured out, the snow did not bring out the best in everybody.

Cars parked along Saratoga Road this week were sitting ducks for vandals. The cars had been pulled over to the side of the road during the height of Monday’s snowstorm because the road became impassable. But sometime between Monday and Tuesday, vandals broke the windows of six vehicles. The drivers apparently were headed home and hiked the rest of the way.

The driver side windows of six cars were broken out. The discovery was made by Island County deputies who were patrolling the area.

Lt. Evan Tingstead said only one person reported the incident to the Island County Sheriff’s Office.

“We saw the windows broken out. People can call us if they want a case number for insurance purposes,” Tingstead said. “It appears to be vandalism. The one reporting party said nothing was taken from inside the car,” he said.

Tingstead said they do not have any suspects at this time.

Many longtime islanders said this week’s storm was the worst in a decade.

Two other storms over the last 56 years remain fixed in the memories of oldtimers.

Some still recall the snowstorm that hit in early 1950. On the front page of the Feb. 2, 1950 edition of The Whidbey Record, readers were treated to a photo showing cars struggling along First Street in Langley, “…printed for out-of-town subscribers and former residents who won’t believe the snow ever was so deep on Langley’s main street.”

That storm paled in comparison to the one that hit Dec. 28, 1996.

Up to two feet or more of snow fell, followed by strong winds and heavy rain. Only 11 of 30 boathouses at Sandy Point were left standing and several pleasure boats sank at their moorings.

Cold temperatures froze the wet streets, mudslides damaged structures around South Whidbey and more than 2,000 homes lost power for several days. Island Transit shut down for two days.

But people made do. Video rentals shot up as folks settled down for the duration; others strapped on cross country skis to enjoy the scenery and get some much-needed exercise.