Storm update

Me: Work has power. Home does not. Home lost power Thursday night about 10pm, so we're on day 4 at this point. A friend brought over his generator yesterday for a few hours, which let us kick up the freezer temp back down & the house temp back up. Our freezer has a warning light for when the temp is too high which did not turn on when we plugged the freezer into the generator yesterday, so yay.

General region:

We've made good progress repairing the backbone transmission system. So far, we've repaired about half of the 85 transmission lines taken down by the storm, and by re-routing power loads, we've re-energized 129 of the 159 substations that lost power from the storm. As we continue to work on restoring the local power-distribution system, we will be able to develop more community-specific information. - from http://www.pse.com

On the "still a few more days" list: Cougar Mountain in Bellevue, rural Woodinville, parts of North Bend, Snoqualmie, Duvall, Carnation and Skykomish in east King County, Issaquah, Lake Hills in Bellevue, Fall City, Fairwood, Lake Youngs and possibly others. (Source: PSE & the Seattle Times) I guess I can be glad Redmond isn't on that list....

In terms of infrastructure, most of Seattle's back up. Most of downtown Bellevue through Microsoft campus - including the Overlake commercial area (156th-140th x 24th - 20th) - is back up ... which means many of our neighbors can at least shower and have a hot breakfast at work :) Some of Kirkland is up - I would think the area around Evergreen Hospital near Totem Lake, but I haven't checked. Downtown Redmond is up, which not only is convenient for me in terms of hitting area restaurants or the library for food, phone recharge and internet, but also it's the home of the wells which provide Redmond with water (I assume the well pumps have backup generators with limited supplies of gas).

So yeah, we're holding out. Hope all is well with y'all....

Sigh: power ETAs

skydancer linked to this info on Puget Sound Energy's site:

Woodinville area
Because of the severe damage in this area, we expect restoration efforts here to continue late into the week, perhaps Friday or Saturday. Many customers remain without service in the Woodinville area, one of our hardest-hit communities. Work currently is focused on restoring the community's high-voltage transmission grid and the three substations that serve the Cottage Lake and Hollywood Hills area. Once this work is complete, we can then concentrate solely on repairing damage to the local distribution lines.

Redmond, Kirkland, Bothell and Kenmore areas
Restoration of the heavily damaged distribution lines here likely will continue until Wednesday or Thursday, though final restoration in isolated pockets in the Juanita, Inglewood, and Avondale areas may not be complete until sometime this weekend. Power has been restored to many homes and businesses in these communities. Service has been restored to all substations and we are now repairing local distribution lines to restore everyone's' power as quickly as we can.

Mercer Island
Two of three substations serving Mercer Island have been restored, with the third expected to be energized later today [Monday]. Many customers have regained service on the north half of Mercer Island. Some customers on the south end of the island will be restored later today, but complete restoration of the island's heavily damaged distribution lines likely will continue late into the week, perhaps Friday or Saturday. Our electric system sustained tremendous damage on the island from falling trees and limbs.