Wind caused widespread Anacortes power outage

A widespread power outage Saturday caused many Commercial Ave. stores to close midday and caused traffic slowdowns on the last weekend before Labor Day weekend.

Fire Chief Richard Curtis said crews responded to several reports of downed power lines, including one across Oakes Ave. about 150 feet east of the ferry landing wye. Traffic was re-routed a long route into Skyline, then to the ferry landing.

State ferries continued to operate despite the winds. 

Puget Sound Energy listed more than 4,000 customers in Anacortes as without power all afternoon. Lights went out at 11:33 am for much of the city. 

The power failure left all traffic lights west of the Swinomish Channel out causing long delays at major intersections. 

Police Captain Lou D'Amelio said the town was lucky there were  no major traffic incidents. Intersections were left to drivers to obey state law, turning intersections into four-way stops. 

As many as 180,000 customers lost electricity and two people were listed as killed as a result of the storm DownSound.

As of dusk PSE had no estimate on restoration. 

Power was restored to a large part of Anacortes at around 11 pm.

Sunday morning PSE said, "As of 6 a.m. more than 97,000 customers in more than 2,200 locations are without power across our service area. We’ve restored power to nearly 75 percent of affected customers. 

"Whatcom and Skagit counties were the hardest hit areas with nearly 50 percent of the remaining outages, or nearly 48,000 customers without power in these two counties. North King County is the second hardest hit area with nearly 19,000 customers still affected."