Mother Nature's presence felt in Mason County

Matt Baide | Jan 05, 20230

Courtesy of Shannon Ernst count

A car drives along state Route 106 on Dec. 27.

The past two weeks in Mason County has seen several extreme weather events.

On Dec. 23, the county had to deal with freezing rain and cold, making roads slick and taking out power for several Mason PUD customers. On Dec. 27, the county had a low pressure system that included high winds coinciding with a king tide, causing flooding and damage throughout Mason County.

Mason County commissioners hosted an emergency meeting on Dec. 27 and approved a resolution for a countywide state of emergency and the use of county resources to assist the community, activate emergency resources and approval for County Administrator Mark Neary to sign any necessary agreements in response to the emergency.

"We have severe flooding that has been reported in the Hoodsport areas, in North Mason Belfair areas," Neary said during the emergency meeting Dec. 27. "The lower portion of Elfendol Pass Road closed due to fallen trees. East Hummingbird Lane house is flooded with water up to mid-calf, four people and a pet were rescued. State Route 300, Northeast Sand Hill Road, flooded, DOT is on the scene. 11991 East State Route 106, there's a house flooding. 9433 NE Shore Road, looks like there's flooding up there too. ...We have king tides all of this week. So king tides with heavy rain and snow melt definitely is putting us into a flooding situation and so we have wanted to get this sent out. I have talked with all three commissioners earlier this morning and agreed we should get this meeting together."

Commissioner Randy Neatherlin said this is not a "big, giant catastrophe or something like that."

"This is general business for us to do when these type of things do occur," Neatherlin said. "Being that there's a king tide, the water that's melting off or coming down doesn't have ready access to get out to the canals and to the Sound, so therefore it backs up and makes it even worse when it comes to flooding. This is something that happens with us every few years, we go through this and there's no reason to be concerned or alarmed except for those who are on those waters to take the special precautions that are necessary to protect you and your family. This is not something to worry about, this is something we deal with more on a regular basis, you just never know when it's going to happen."

From Dec. 23 to Dec. 26, around 6,500 PUD 3 customers lost power, according to PUD 3 spokesperson Lynn Eaton.

"The longest area out was the Northshore and Tahuya Peninsula customers fed from our Collins Lake Substation," Eaton wrote to the Journal. "About 1,000 customers were out for just over 18 hours, another 2,300 customers in that area were out for about 15 hours. About 560 Customers in the Twanoh Heights area were out for 14 hours. About 200 customers on the Mission Creek Road were out for 9½ hours. Dec. 26, we had about 1,000 customers in the Matlock area out for just under five hours. The rest of the scattered outages were out between one to four hours."

Eaton said the PUD 3 was ready for the outages and monitored the storm activity. PUD 3 has five line crews and two tree crews in addition to service workers, dirt crews, utility people, warehousemen and flaggers, all of whom worked during the extreme weather.

"The safety of our customers and employees is always our highest priority," Eaton wrote. "We ask customers to be prepared for these types of storms and to stay away from downed power lines. Often on big storms (this one included) we have people thinking they are being helpful by marking downed power lines with caution tape, etc. - nothing upsets our linemen more. These lines are deadly - always assume downed lines are live and stay at least 100 feet away."

PUD 1 General Manager Kristin Masteller wrote to the Journal the ice storm didn't affect PUD 1 that badly.

"We got really lucky. The last ice storm several years ago was terrible and people were out for several days," Masteller wrote to the Journal. "We didn't have anyone out of power longer than a few hours over the weekend. We had several small outages and single customer outages due to trees and limbs falling."

Masteller said the snow was the worst part of the extreme weather, but the high winds Dec. 27 missed the west side of Hood Canal and there were only a couple small power outages that were restored quickly.

"Our steep terrain along the canal and the narrow, windy Highway 101 makes it difficult to access areas where trees have come down," Masteller wrote. "Our guys have to cut their way up the highway and sometimes cut their way back down the highway. We don't have tree crews; our power and water crews do it all. So, it takes a lot of hard work from our guys and coordination with our friends at WSDOT, the counties and our neighboring public power utilities. After they got our system back in service, some of our crew members went north to help out Jefferson PUD again too. They usually get a lot of snow like we do, with the higher elevations. That's what's great about the public power model is that we all are here to help each other take care of our collective customers. It's also why our PUD service area outages are restored quickly compared to the more urban areas."

Masteller wrote about the need for customers to prepare themselves to be self-sufficient for several days in the case of a major storm or outages. Customers should also have a plan in place and some stockpile supplies and a backup battery or generator for those people who need power for medical or other health-dependent devices.