On the 38th anniversary of Vancouver’s deadly tornado, gusting winds Monday blew the top of a fir tree onto a garage in the Landover-Sharmel neighborhood and knocked out power to almost 600 Ridgefield-area utility customers.
Wind gusts in Vancouver topped 30 mph several times Monday afternoon, according to weather data collected at Pearson Field.
This was the third strong spring storm to strike the Pacific Northwest in the past few weeks, said Vancouver’s Steve Pierce, an executive board member with the local chapter of the American Meteorological Society. Winds reached as high as 70 mph along the coast.
One of the local gusts snapped off the upper half of a fir tree at about 5:40 p.m., and it fell onto a garage at 2303 N.E. 124th Ave.
A Vancouver Fire Department ladder truck responded to the emergency call. Firefighters who examined the structure found four damaged roof trusses in the garage, but said the house was undamaged.
Damage was estimated at $5,000 to $6,000, Firefighter-spokesman Jim Flaherty said.
A windblown tree knocked out power for 595 customers of Clark Public Utilities at 6:10 p.m.; electrical service was restored by 6:30 p.m., utility spokesman Mick Shutt said.
On April 5, 1972, a tornado cut a nine-mile swath across the east side of Vancouver to the Brush Prairie area. Six people died and 300 persons were injured. The tornado caused about $5 million in property damage in Washington alone. It also was the most devastating tornado in Oregon’s recorded weather history, dating back to 1871.
