An evening wind storm blasted through Sweet Home Thursday leaving piles of debris strewn throughout the area and many areas without power temporarily.
Thursday night was “a flurry of activity,” Police Chief Bob Burford said. The storm was short-lived but generated a number of calls to the police department about trees down, including the Pleasant Valley-Mark’s Ridge area at 4:50 p.m., Highway 228 and Crawfordsville Drive at 4:58 p.m., a CenturyTel line at 1200 49th Avenue at 5:01 p.m. and a line down on North River Road at 5:25 p.m. The wind blew down the temporary fence at the construction site of the new police building.
The wind caused temporary power fluctuations throughout the Sweet Home area and power outages in scattered locations.
Pacific Power started receiving calls as early as 2:30 p.m. and continued receiving calls of power outages into Friday morning. Virtually all of them were the result of trees falling on power lines.
The largest was when a tree fell on a feeder line putting 900 customers out of power from 5 p.m. to 8:20 p.m.
Other power failures were shorter and smaller.
One call affecting about 100 customers had a crew coming to Sweet Home from Albany at 1:15 a.m.
The latest call came in at 5:43 a.m. on Friday.