100 sickened by carbon monoxide during outage

100 sickened by carbon monoxide during outage

By Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) - At least 100 people, including one man who died, suffered carbon monoxide poisoning after they dragged generators and charcoal grills inside to stay warm following widespread power outages in western Washington.

A 26-year-old Kirkland man was found dead in his home Saturday with a generator running in the living room. Other victims as young as 11 months were treated at Seattle-area hospitals after inhaling carbon monoxide.

At least five people were at Harborview Medical Center, one in serious condition Sunday and the others stable, a nursing supervisor said. Virginia Mason Medical Center had treated more than 55 victims in its hyperbaric chamber, which re-oxygenates the blood.

"We're dealing with a carbon-monoxide epidemic in Western Washington," said Dr. Neil Hampson in Virginia Mason's Center for Hyperbaric Medicine. "This has the potential to be the worst case of carbon-monoxide poisoning in the country."

With hundreds of thousands of people still without power in the region Sunday, utility crews worked through the night to clear trees from power lines and repair damage to main "feeder" lines that run from substations to neighborhoods.

Gov. Chris Gregoire expanded an earlier disaster proclamation to cover the entire state, freeing counties to spend money necessary to help victims. The state National Guard was also mobilized to help get fuel and supplies to hard-hit areas.

About 280,000 customers with Puget Sound Energy, the state's largest private utility, were still without power since the windstorm hit Thursday, cutting service to roughly 700,000 clients.

Most of the utility's damage was in King County, where 200,000 outages remained. It will take several days to restore power to areas that include Bellevue's Cougar Mountain, rural Woodinville, North Bend, Snoqualmie, Duvall, Carnation and Skykomish.

"There are still pockets of neighborhoods in Bellevue, Kirkland, Bothell and Issaquah without power," said Dorothy Bracken, a spokeswoman for the utility.

With another 80 crews set to arrive from as far away as southern California and Kansas, the utility plans to have more than 2,000 people working in the field to restore power, she said.

About 21,000 Seattle City Light customers were in the dark Sunday after crews worked throughout the night. Isolated outages were reported in Skyway, Tukwila, Rainier Valley, Mount Lake, Leschi, Madrona and parts of West Seattle, Southpark, Burien and Normandy Park.

"We expect to have a majority of our customers restored by Monday," said Peter Clarke, a utility spokesman.

North of Seattle, the Snohomish County Public Utility District had restored service to all but 9,000 customers. Those still without power Sunday were mostly in the county's south and east region, sections of Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mount Lake Terrace, Clearview and Bothell, utility spokesman Neil Neroutsos said. Some scattered outages also remained on Camano Island.

"We hope to have them up in the next couple of days," Neroutsos said. "We'll be clearing trees for several days just to get access to some of these places."

Power was slowly coming back on for people in Pierce County, where about 3,000 customers were without power in Tacoma and in pockets throughout the county, utility spokeswoman Chris Gleason said.

More than 1,000 customers remained without service in Grays Harbor County on the coast.

To the east, about 3,300 were still without power Sunday after service was restored for much of Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Utility crews with Avista Corp. had shifted focus to the more rural areas of Deer Park and Loon Lake, north of Spokane, and Hayden, Idaho, north of Coeur d'Alene.

"Those areas tend to be more wooded, so it's going to take longer for us to get to the power lines," Avista spokeswoman Laurine Jue said.

At its peak, the windstorm knocked out power to more than a million people. By Sunday, the storm had resulted in at least six deaths, including a Spanaway man, Steven Thielen, 48, who died Saturday in a fire started by a candle burning in his home.
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