Four individuals died in at least two deadly car accidents on Tuesday due to a winter storm that brought strong wind gusts to Oregon, according to early police investigations.
According to police, a third deadly collision that left one person dead and another injured appears to have been influenced by the weather.
According to a news release from the Oregon State Police, a large tree that fell on their pickup truck while they were traveling on U.S. 26 about 15 miles east of the coast caused three deaths, including a 4-year-old child.
When emergency personnel came, the passengers were already deceased.
The commercial truck driver was killed farther east on U.S. 26 on Mount Hood when a large tree fell on the vehicle’s cab due to snow and strong winds, leading him to lose control and abandon the route, according to state police. The truck’s 53-year-old driver, the only person inside, was declared dead at the scene.
According to the organization, another individual perished when a tree struck a pickup truck on Interstate 84 close to Cascade Locks in the Columbia River Gorge. The driver was hurt, so they took him to the hospital. According to Captain Kyle Kennedy, spokesman for the state police, the weather appears to have contributed to the tree collapsing.
Must Check-
- More Floods Evacuations in Orange County as Rainwater Fills Rivers Lakes
- Flooding Occurs in Portions of the Portland Metro Area as a Result of Heavy Rain
In parts of the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday, strong winds uprooted trees and resulted in power disruptions that, at one point, affected more than 160,000 customers. According to Andy Bryant, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s Portland office, wind gusts reached 107 mph near Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood and 86 mph near Cape Perpetua on Oregon’s central coast.
More than 10,000 customers in Oregon still had power outages as of 5 p.m. on Thursday, according to an online outage tracker power outage. Utility companies have gradually restored electricity.
PowerOutage.com earlier on Tuesday indicated a peak of roughly 117,000 affected consumers in the early afternoon.
The utilities reporting the most outages are Portland General Electric and Pacific Power. Both companies stated that hundreds of service crew members, some from out of the state, were working to assess and repair the damage.
A windstorm the day before in Washington State severely damaged power lines in and around North Bend and Snoqualmie, leaving thousands of people east of Seattle without electricity as of Wednesday afternoon.
Power was anticipated to be restored to the region around 10 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Gerald Tracy, a spokesman for Puget Sound Energy, who cautioned that more issues could delay that estimate.
According to Tracy, mountainous terrain and more rural places make it necessary for our employees to occasionally set out on foot and deal with emergencies using hand tools.
The outages follow a severe wind, ice, and downpour battering Southwest Washington and Oregon sections.
Giant waves, high tides, and flooding were also brought to the area by the storm system on Tuesday.
According to the National Weather Service, wave heights along the Oregon coast reached 30 feet.
Stay connected with lakecountyfloridanews.com for the Latest News.
