County still reeling from severe storms

SANDPOINT — Bonner County residents are still picking up the pieces and some are still without power following Wednesday’s severe thunderstorm.

“We had a ton of trees down and trees on structures,” said Bob Howard, Bonner County’s director of Emergency Management. “We had a lot of power lines down and power poles broken off.”

Western Bonner County and Priest Lake are known for taking the brunt of storms, but Howard said central Bonner County appeared to be hit the hardest when severe winds and thunderstorms lashed the area.

Winds at Lake Pend Oreille’s Garfield Bay took out power and broke docks at Garfield Shores Resort & Marina.

“The winds were so strong that it broke all those docks loose at Garfield Bay. It sandwiched all the boats and docks together,” said Howard.

The damage was reminiscent of a 2007 storm which caused the makeshift breakwater to shift and expose the docks to 80-mile-an-hour winds.

Nearby, at Green Bay, two people were reportedly injured by a falling tree, which sent one of them to Bonner General Health.

Response to the campground was slowed by trees across the roadway, according to the Bonner EMS call log.

Northern Lights said crews were working on Friday to repair the main line at Garfield Bay, but said did not expect the work to be done before the weekend hit.

The Gamlin Lake Trail System is closed until further notice because of storm damage, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

 “Our initial assessment is that over 20 trees are blocking the first 200 yards of trail, and there are snags and leaning trees that are also a hazard to visitor use in the area,” said Kurt Pindel, BLM’s recreation planner for the Coeur d’Alene Field Office said on Friday.

The agency expects to complete a full assessment of the damage next week, but warned that it could take a month or more to clean up the area so it can be reopened to public use.

Sunnyside was also raked by the storm, which snapped a number of large trees halfway up their trunks.

Downed trees blocked roads, cutting off road access to a number of homes.

“We had eight to 10 homes that were totally isolated until last night because of downed trees,” Howard said.

The destructive storm reached north into the Cabinet Mountains. Yet more power lines and polls and trees were snapped.

Janice Schoonover of the Western Pleasure Guest Ranch in Gold Creek said power lines were knocked to the ground in areas where horses were kept and one of its cabins came perilously close to being damaged by a falling tree.

“Everybody’s OK,” she said as she prepared to host a wedding at the ranch.

Crews from Northern Lights and Kootenai Electric worked on Friday to restore power to homes in the Gold Creek drainage.

The wind speed during the storm surpassed 70 mph and neared 80 mph, according to measurements collected by the U.S. Navy’s Acoustic Research Detachment at Bayview.

Avista reported that more than 300 of its customers in Bonner County were still without power on Friday afternoon. Northern Lights reported that 12,000 of its members were without power in the wake of the storm, but had narrowed that number to 2,700 by Friday morning.