• To report a power outage, use the Clark Public Utilities’ PowerLine, 360-992-8000.
• To report downed trees in Vancouver, call 360-487-8177 between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., and 360-693-9302 after hours.
• In unincorporated areas, call Clark County Public Works at 360-397-2446 anytime.
The cleanup of Saturday’s windstorm stretched into Monday, with tree companies continuing their response by removing trees and tree limbs from houses, yards and curbsides.
Kirk Ueckert, owner of Timbermans Tree Service, and his crew worked Monday on removing a tree that had fallen atop a house at 4816 N.E. 117th St.
A large chunk of a poplar tree toppled onto the two-story house, owned by his friend Kathy Waldel.
• To report a power outage, use the Clark Public Utilities' PowerLine, 360-992-8000.
• To report downed trees in Vancouver, call 360-487-8177 between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., and 360-693-9302 after hours.
• In unincorporated areas, call Clark County Public Works at 360-397-2446 anytime.
“This is serious damage,” he said, adding that Waldel had been preparing to sell the house.
Ueckert was busy all weekend driving around the area giving quotes to people whose property was damaged as a result of the strong winds, which reached speeds of 40-50 mph in the Portland-Vancouver area on Saturday afternoon.
The strongest gust in the area was recorded at 70 mph near the Port of Vancouver, according to the National Weather Service.
Robyn Clifton, owner of TreeWise, said that she had crews out all weekend to take care of emergency situations, such as trees that had come down on houses, roadways and into power lines. Crews spent Monday picking up the debris that they had chopped up and left behind in the rush to respond to the situations that jeopardized safety.
“Everybody’s all hands in,” she said. “We’re trying to do the cleanup now.”
The private companies weren’t the only people working on the downed trees and tree limbs.
Vancouver Public Works received 27 calls of downed trees blocking streets or right-of-ways Saturday, many of which were whole trees blocking or partially blocking streets, said the agency’s spokeswoman Loretta Callahan.
A crew of eight worked for about 10 hours to clear the debris, which included a large hemlock on East 29th Street that had fallen over the Interstate 5 overpass, Callahan said. Clark County Public Works received 29 downed tree calls.
Clark Public Utilities spokeswoman Erica Erland said that 57 reported outages resulted in 7,467 customers without power for various lengths of time Saturday.
The longest outage, which lasted nearly 16 hours, affected 55 customers in Felida. Erland said that crews had to repair several spans of downed power lines to restore power. Most of the other outages, Erland said, lasted a much shorter amount of time.
The extra work meant overtime for the utility – 725 hours, which included line crews, technical services, servicemen and dispatchers.
