Blow me down

MAT-SU — The Valley is slowly returning to normal after winds gusting up to 80 mph toppled trailers and knocked out power to as many as 2,500 homes.

A Lynden Transport semi with a trailer attached overturned near Wasilla Lake Wednesday morning; the driver was not injured. A conex was blown off its transport near Wal-Mart. A semi trailer rolled over in the parking lot of Diversified Tire. And several planes were wrecked by the wind at Wasilla Airport.

Central Mat-Su Fire Chief James Steele said he showed up on scene of the toppled semi on his way to work Wednesday. While there, he watched the wind do more damage.

“As I was coming to work and was looking at that truck, there’s a pickup with a full camper in the bed of the truck that was coming through the intersection at Crusey (Street) and Parks (Highway), and the camper just flipped out of the bed of the truck from the strong winds,” Steele said.

He said it was the kind of camper a person can sleep in with a full door on the back that landed on the side of the road.

By Thursday, winds were still blowing, but not nearly as hard. Matanuska Electric Association had whittled the number of customers out of power down to less than 100.

MEA General Manager Joe Griffith said that when wind picks up like this, linemen go to work and don’t stop until the power is back on.

“The don’t work shifts. They just work,” he said.

Outages come from a number of sources, Griffith said. Wind causes power lines to bang together. Trees fall onto lines. And, in extreme cases, power poles break and come down. Wind also tends to hamper linemen’s work. And sometimes it’s too dangerous to use hydraulic lifts; wind has been known to topple those on their sides, Griffith said.

“Last three windstorms, there came a point where I said, ‘No more lifting of anything. It’s too dangerous,’” he said.

The storm also caused numerous problems for the state’s Department of Transportation, which had crews from almost the start of the storm working to fix damaged stoplights and signs.

“Some of the stoplights actually had the whole stoplight head fall off the wire,” said DOT spokesman Rick Feller.

DOT went to work Thursday evening to fix the last — the one at Seward Meridian Parkway and Palmer-Wasilla Highway — of the wind-damaged stoplights.

“Hopefully by tonight we will have that restored, but it will mean another rush hour of traffic backing up on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway,” Feller said.

The problem there was damage to the lights and also a blown-out electrical box that needed to be replaced. A Valley resident himself, Feller said he was impressed at his neighbors’ ability to cope with the outage. Everyone seemed to treat the intersection the way they should — as a four-way stop, he said.

“They were flowing very well north to south, but you get into the real need for that stoplight when you talk about the east-west traffic,” he said.

In Palmer, emergency responders reported the usual wind-related activity; trashcans bouncing down the road, covers blowing off of airplanes at the airport. Mostly, it was downed power lines that kept them busy, responders said. Thursday morning, public works crews worked to dig out snow berms the wind had piled up.

In Wasilla, Mayor Verne Rupright said several airplanes were overturned at the Wasilla Airport by the high winds. Schools remained open, but the Greater Palmer Chamber of Commerce announced Wednesday morning it had cancelled that day’s meeting because of the wind and power outages. The Mat-Su Borough landfill also closed because of high winds Wednesday.

Commander Tom Remaley with the Palmer Police Department said that, professionally, the wind didn’t cause him too much trouble, but it was kind of annoying to him personally.

“I couldn’t sleep last night it was ripping all the shingles off my house,” he said Wednesday.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.