Businesses face thousands in losses after outage

Published 4:32 pm Wednesday, January 25, 2012

A picture of a melting snowman decorated a paper sign in Georgia Manning’s gift shop window – Snowmaggedon Sale, everything 20 percent off.

After losing several days of business from last week’s power outages, which amounts to about $1,000 in revenue, her hope was tempt sales at Arts West Unique Gifts at Gilman Village.

While most Issaquah families struggled to keep their homes warm in a power outage, which affected 18,000 homes, businesses were hit even harder with a half-week of lost sales and, for some, thousands of dollars in spoiled food.

Puget Sound Energy hasn’t seen such a destructive storm since 2006, said Spokesperson Gretchen Aliabadi. The Lake Tradition transmission switching station, just behind Issaquah High School, completely lost power.

With trees coming down along the access road, it wasn’t safe for crews to traverse into the woods, much less fix the problem until Friday.

While freezing rain continued to fall Thursday, Stan Phillips was trashing spoiled ribs and pork shoulder at his barbecue place on Front Street. He hopes insurance will help cover some of the loss, but it won’t make up for the four days his employees couldn’t work. He sent them home early Tuesday and they didn’t return until Sunday.

When the power went out the next day at Fischer Meats, owner Chris Chiechi tightened the doors on his meat locker and closed shop until he got power back Saturday. His refrigerator kept his cuts cool until the power came back Saturday.

Like most, his big loss was sales.

“Anytime you lose 50 percent of the week’s revenue, it’s a big deal,” he said. “Once those sales are gone, they’re gone.”

Monday, a customer ordered two bacon burgers for dinner. When Chiechi asked if she’d like anything else, she lamented about all the food she had to toss out, and said she didn’t trust the power would continue to stay on.

Lights came back on for the final 1,000 customers Monday. Once the crews could fix the transmission station, it was then a matter of clearing fallen trees on smaller connections.

About half of King County’s transmission lines lost power, most of them from Issaquah south. There was so much tree damage, the city closed seven roads.

When the power came back on, Jamie Reynolds, manager of the Rolling Log Tavern, couldn’t have been happier to return to work. A leak in the roof caused a major mess behind the bar, but as a mother of five, she rather choose her time off.

“I’m almost wondering if it’d pay to keep a generator,” she said. “Issaquah got hit particularly hard.”

A tree along Front Street split like a banana from the weight of ice and snow last week. Businesses in Old Town Issaquah got hit hard by lost sales revenue.