Thousands still without power in hard-hit Kitsap Peninsula

Thousands were still in the dark in Port Orchard Tuesday night, despite utility crews working tirelessly to restore power.

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. - Thousands were still in the dark in Port Orchard Tuesday night, although a Puget Sound Energy spokesperson says crews had been working non-stop since early Monday morning to get the power back on.

The outage map, pictured below on Tuesday afternoon, showed just how widespread the outages were. Late Tuesday evening, the number of customers without power was posted at around 40,000.

Residents in the Port Orchard area say one of the biggest challenges was trying to get what they needed to get through the outage, when many of the surrounding businesses were without power as well.

"Trees are just breaking," said Levon Howard, a Port Orchard resident. He says at around 3 a.m., the storm started whipping through his neighborhood.

"Looked outside and I just saw the trees bending over," said Howard.

Howard captured the sights and sounds of the storm on his cell phone and shared the video with FOX 13.

"Transformer just blew up," he said in the video.

Trees were snapping and breaking, one landing on a nearby roof.

"Very intense, very intense," said Howard. "I never heard so many trees breaking at once and seeing the three transformers that I seen pop off one after another down the roadway."

He made his way to a local 7-Eleven that night on foot, capturing video along the way, but everything went dark just after he arrived.

"About 1,000 feet from the gas station all the lights went off," he said.

"It went out at around 3:30 and we haven’t seen any flickers of hope yet," said Alex Kidder, a Port Orchard resident.

Kidder said it was a "blessing" that Fred Meyer was open on Tuesday, running on a backup power system.

"Water and whatever I could pick up," said Kidder, showing us his purchases. "I’m sure everything in my fridge is toast at this point."

"We are just picking up a battery dongle thing to charge up the phones in our car," said Larry Blomberg, a Port Orchard resident who stopped by Fred Meyer.

Matthew Mullen also needed a charge for his phone Monday.

"We have no power, phones are dying at home, so I thought I’d charge it in my truck, but I have no gas," said Mullen.

He soon discovered the power was out at his local 76 station as he pulled up to the pump. The sign below was posted on the door.

"I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m going to have to go home before I run out of gas and shut my phone off for the night," said Mullen.

Some folks were lucky enough to have a generator. Howard says he struck gold at Costco.

"There are no generators and when we got to Costco they had five already on carts ready to go through the checkout so we grabbed one of those and took off," said Howard.

Puget Sound Energy said the Kitsap Peninsula was hit hard.

"At one point, we had about 71,000 people without power this morning, and we’ve been steadily making progress restoring those customers," said Melanie Coon with the media team at PSE.

Residents say they'll be improvising until it is restored.

"Brought out the camp stove and put it in the kitchen," said Mullen.

"We are going to make dinner on our Coleman camp stove, so we are ready to do the thing," said Blomberg.

Schools were also without power on Monday, causing closures. The South Kitsap School District sent out a statement saying:

"We initially had schools on two-hour delay today but transitioned to full closure due to a complete power outage at our sites. We are currently monitoring Puget Sound Energy’s restoration of a transfer station which is having a major impact. Currently, all of our schools and buildings are without power."

The district says it plans to make a call to families early Wednesday morning with a decision about school operations, depending on power.

The Source: Information in this story is from Puget Sound Energy, the South Kitsap School District and FOX 13 Seattle reporting.