Winds Push Tree Onto Pickup, Killing Woman Windstorm Injures Pilot, Worries Mariners, Knocks Out Power To Thousands In Puget Sound Area

A woman was killed when a tree fell on a pickup truck and a pilot was critically injured when his home-built plane crashed into a house as a severe windstorm swept across Washington on Sunday.

High winds also tore the roof off a commercial dairy barn in Kent, knocked out electrical service to thousands in the Puget Sound area and prompted dozens of calls to the Coast Guard from distressed mariners.

The 34-year-old woman was killed instantly when a falling tree crushed a pickup truck on Washington 525 near Mukilteo, 25 miles north of Seattle, police said.

The woman was riding in the truck with her husband and young son when they came across a tree down in the road, Mukilteo police Cmdr. Mike Murphy said. The husband was attempting to use his truck to push the tree out of the way when another tree crashed down onto the truck’s cab.

“It took the cab clear down and nearly bent the truck in half,” Murphy said.

The husband and son were taken to Everett’s Providence General Medical Center where they are both listed in stable condition, a nursing supervisor said. The names of the family were not immediately available.

The storms prompted the National Weather Service to issue a high-wind warning for the coast and the western interior into Sunday night.

Winds of 40 to 50 mph were reported along the coast with peak gusts to 71 mph at Westport, 55 mph at Forks and 62 mph at Hoquiam.

In the interior, winds were 25 to 35 mph with gusts to 56 mph at the Naval base on Whidbey Island, 45 mph at Bellingham, 68 mph at Bangor, 47 mph at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and 52 mph at Everett.

“This one is really knocking us around,” said Larry Vogel, a Seattle City Light spokesman, who estimated that 30,000 customers were without power.

Snohomish County reported 25,000 outages, with scattered outages in nearby King, Whatcom, Thurston and Kitsap counties, Vogel said.

Some of the most severe damage occurred in south King County, where power lines were torn down and a barn at the Smith Brothers’ Dairy Farm in Kent lost its roof.

“I just ran inside the building over there because there was pieces of wood flying all over the place,” dairy worker Shon Rivera told KIRO-TV in Seattle.

On the Olympic Peninsula, what authorities described as a home-built plane crashed into an empty house near Diamond Point. The pilot was listed in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Authorities believe high winds contributed to the accident, KING-TV reported.

An airplane at Auburn Municipal Airport, south of Seattle, tipped over on its nose while landing, but no one was hurt.

The Coast Guard dispatched a cutter to assist a 40-foot sailboat in Discovery Bay, where winds of up to 70 knots were reported.

In another incident, a 40-year-old man who fell off a raft in Penn cove had to be rescued by helicopter, the Coast Guard said.

“Since noon, we have answered calls from mariners from Olympia to Whidbey Island,” Senior Chief Petty Officer Craig Herlihy said.

Passenger-only ferry service between Seattle and Bremerton to the west was temporarily halted because of 80 knot winds, while the Port Townsend-Keystone ferry was running behind schedule, state ferry officials reported.