PSE: Power may not come back on for many Bainbridge homes until Sunday

Nearly 2,000 homes and businesses remained without power on Bainbridge Island Friday following the end-of-week windstorm that knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands of people in Western Washington.

Outages on Bainbridge stretch from Agate Pass on the north end of the island all the way to Fort Ward on the south end.

PSE hopes to have powered restored to most of Bainbridge by noon Sunday.

Impacts of the storm extended far beyond the island, with blackouts reported from Olympia all the way north to the Canadian border. PSE was responding to 664 individual reports of outages in the region, with 50,785 of the utility’s customers still without power just before 10 a.m. Friday.

PSE said Thursday’s high winds and resulting tree damage caused excessive damage to the electric system in Kitsap, Island, Skagit and Whatcom counties.

PSE also said that of the hundreds of locations where damage was reported, roughly three-quarters of the reports were centered in those four hard-hit counties.

An exact number of the businesses and homes that lost power due to Thursday’s winds was not immediately available, but PSE said it had restored power to more than 235,000 of its customers by 4 a.m. Friday.

PSE also said it opened its Emergency Coordination Center and local storm bases and brought in additional crews to help with restoration efforts.

On Bainbridge, a total of 36 areas across the island were still without power at 10 a.m. Friday.

Elsewhere in Kitsap County, outages were also ongoing in Silverdale, Brownsville, Seabeck, Poulsbo, Suquamish, Indianola and Hansville.

No storm-related injuries were immediately reported on Bainbridge, said Assistant Chief Jared Moravec of the Bainbridge Island Fire Department.

The fire department saw an uptick in calls Thursday afternoon, Moravec added, and the department opened its Operations Center to help manage the call volume.