December 27, 2011 Washington girl killed when tree limb falls on vehicle www.privateofficer.com
Seattle WA Dec 27 2011 A blast of rainy, windy weather blew through the Puget Sound region Sunday, killing a 9-year-old girl on Whidbey Island and cutting power to thousands of people.
The girl, Tobiah Leonard, died when a tree section, estimated to be at least 15 feet long and nearly one foot across, crashed onto the roof of the Ford Explorer in which she was riding, Washington State Patrol Trooper Keith Leary said.
“The wind just snapped that piece of the tree off,” Leary said. “It’s just a very, very tragic accident — it’s not something anybody could have avoided.”
CPR was tried, Leary said, but the girl died at the scene.
Four other people in the truck — a woman who was driving, a man in the front passenger seat, and 18-year-old and 12-year-old girls — were taken to Whidbey General Hospital with what initially were believed to be minor injuries. However, the man later was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for neck and back injuries.
The five people were believed to be family members, but Leary said he couldn’t confirm that. They were on their way from Langley to a Christmas gathering in the south part of the island when the accident happened in the 7500 block of Bailey Road, near Cultus Bay.
Some 37,000 customers across the region lost power during the day, many for hours, as winds gusting at more than 45 mph blew down tree limbs and power lines.
Seattle City Light said most of the outages were concentrated in the northern and southern edges of its service area — in Shoreline to the north and in Burien and SeaTac in the south.
By 8:45 p.m. Sunday, power had been restored to all but about 2,600 customers, City Light said. The biggest concentrations of outages remaining, in Shoreline, were expected to be resolved by 10 p.m.
Some 6,900 Puget Sound Energy customers still were without power Sunday night, spokeswoman MacKenzie McDowell said. More than 5,000 were on the Eastside and in north King County, she said; most of the rest were in Kitsap, Skagit and Whatcom counties.
About 3,200 customers lost power in Kitsap County on Sunday morning, a sheriff’s dispatcher said. Bainbridge Island and Port Orchard were the hardest-hit areas.
PSE crews were planning to work through the night to restore power, McDowell said, but there was no estimate as to when everyone might get their lights back on.
Strong winds knocked a 40-year-old kite-surfer into Lake Washington on Sunday morning, the Coast Guard reported.
The man had left from Magnuson Park and was about three-fourths of the way to Kirkland when he fell into the chilly lake, Petty Officer Michelle Mosley said.
Friends, who had stayed onshore, called the Coast Guard just before noon after losing sight of him. A helicopter and rescue boat were mobilized, but a boater who had heard the emergency radio traffic found the kite-surfer and pulled him from the water first.
The man was not injured, Mosley said — “just wet and mad and a little cold.”
Source:seattletimes
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