Doug Clark: Windstorm transformed Spokane into post-apocalyptic maze

We were in a video game without knowing the rules.

That’s what driving around Spokane’s wind-torn South Hill felt like Tuesday night when my son-in-law, Shane Berry, and I ventured out to check on our properties.

The streets were the same ones I rode my bike over as a kid.

But the landscape had now become unfamiliar and mean, with every other turn representing a potential threat: massive downed pines blocking the asphalt, sidewalks buckled from overturned trees and power poles bowled over or tilted at crazy angles.

Go one way. Stop. Turn around. Go another way. Stop. Back up …

Add the dark. Everything always looks more sinister and surreal in the shadowy dark.

Entire streets black as ink. Stoplights out. The same with many streetlights and some 200,000 homes now reported without power.

My hometown had become post-apocalyptic, like a plot line to a “Z-Nation” episode.

“You’re going to be telling this story for a long, long time,” I told Shane as he navigated carefully around scattered limbs and debris.

My daughter, Emily; Shane, and baby Ronan migrated to the Clark house earlier in the day, about an hour or so after the winds came and their power went out.

I’m almost ashamed to admit that my lovely wife, Sherry, and I still have electricity.

Unlike Ice Storm ’96, when we went dark for eight days, this deadly weather event left us on the guilty side of the boulevard, facing the dark windows of our neighbors.

You can go nuts trying to figure this stuff out, like why some trees topple while others remain standing.

After several forced retreats due to broken pines, Shane and I found our way to my late mom’s house, where nothing looked amiss.

To my amazement, the incredibly tall pines in the backyard and side of the home somehow hung tough. Bizarre. After what I had seen, my mind pictured those things sticking into the roof.

We turned on 14th Avenue only to be stopped by yellow caution tape probably indicating downed power lines.

We backed up and headed east on another street, passing some people who were milling around with flashlights and examining a massive tree that really had speared a roof.

“This is unbelievable,” Shane said.

We drove south, slowing at each intersection where the traffic lights had failed, then we aimed west on 29th, past one Stygian business after another.

According to the Avista map, my kids live in the middle of a South Hill red zone, meaning no power to a whole lot of residents.

Soon, we could see why. At Ivory Street and 28th Avenue, a huge tree lay across the street, barring further progress.

Back to 29th. At Arthur and 28th we stopped again and stared gap-jawed at downed power poles that had somehow cracked and were now suspended in a jumble of twisted wires.

Shane parked his car. We walked and discovered good and bad news at the Berry household. The bad news was that the wind had snapped off the top half of a 70-foot pine tree in their front yard like a broken toothpick.

The good news is that the falling timber had landed safely in the street and not on any rooftops. Must’ve made a helluva noise.

Back in the car I told Shane not to head home just yet. We had one more emergency stop to make.

“I heard Target is open,” I said. “We’re running short on toilet paper.”

Doug Clark can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or at dougc@spokesman.com.