Dozens escape from falling trees

Ben Nelson got an unexpected houseguest late Thursday night – one that landed him in the hospital and destroyed his Hauser Lake home.

As Nelson loafed on his old yellow couch, a powerful wind gust spiraled a gigantic fir tree, snapped the monster in two and sent it smashing through his roof. The broken tree, chunks of ceiling and loose insulation crashed down on Nelson, burying him in debris.

The force of the rubble pushed his girlfriend, Tina McCoy, off the couch and into a wall. “All I could think was I had to dig him out,” McCoy said Friday.

The close shave was one of dozens Thursday night and Friday morning as the storm rattled the region, blocked roads, closed schools and ski resorts, and left tens of thousands of Inland Northwest homes and businesses without power.

More than 10,000 households in North Idaho remained in the dark early Friday evening, and utility officials said some customers should prepare to wait 24 hours or longer before power is restored.

The American Red Cross’ North Idaho district set up an emergency shelter at Coeur d’Alene High School. Director Kerren Vollmer expected at least 50 people would stay the night.

Gusts up to 70 mph toppled trees throughout North Idaho and Eastern Washington, with dozens falling on homes, businesses, cars, power lines and fences.

Several trees came down in the Tamarack mobile home park on Government Way in Coeur d’Alene. One small travel trailer and a truck were damaged.

Falling trees destroyed two trailer homes at the waterfront Westside Resort in Hauser.

Darlene and Al Duprey were asleep early Friday when a large ponderosa pine fell on the travel trailer where they live. Al Duprey was pinned to the bed for more than an hour while emergency crews used chain saws to cut him free. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital, where he received four stitches in his leg. Duprey was released in time to go to work.

“If it would have been a little different it would have killed us,” said Darlene Duprey while she raked pine needles from her driveway.

The couple has no insurance and no place to go. They planned to rig up a couple of tarps to keep the rain and snow out of the rest of the small trailer. If that’s not livable, Darlene Duprey said, they can always live in their pickup camper, parked in front of the smashed travel trailer.

As she talked, she kept an eye on a stand of similar pines towering above her head.

“Look at all these trees,” she said. “They’re dangerous. They all should come out of here. I don’t need the shade.”

The same tree also destroyed Susan Ginter’s blue trailer house, slicing it in half, right through the kitchen.

Luckily, Ginter was asleep in a back bedroom, said her daughter, Cindy Marcella.

“It’s probably a total loss,” Marcella said, tearing up at the destruction of her family home that was fully decorated for Christmas.

Marcella’s husband, Nick, sawed pieces of the tree that rested in the kitchen.

“Thank God for family and friends,” Cindy Marcella said.

Hauser Lake Fire Chief Larry Simms said it’s a miracle nobody was killed in the storm, which he characterized as the worst since 1996.

“Trees just came down everywhere,” Simms said at the volunteer fire station. “We’ve been very busy.”

At Nelson’s house, McCoy wore a painting mask as she sifted through three feet of loose insulation and busted ceiling boards, looking for her boyfriend’s wallet and pants. Her black Labrador retriever also rummaged through the rubble, finding his stuffed reindeer.

Somehow Nelson lost his jeans when McCoy struggled to pull him free. His wallet is filled with Christmas cash.

The couple had just returned from the hospital Friday morning where Nelson was treated for blunt force trauma to his head, neck and back. Dazed from the disaster and pain medication, Nelson stood in the doorway wearing a neck brace and warned McCoy to be careful. He feared the home where they have lived since 1997 was unstable.

The wind howled through the two-story house, in which the front was nearly split in two by the fir. The couple still has a picture-perfect view of the lake, but through a hole in the wall and roof, not a window.

“Now I don’t have to worry about where to put the Christmas tree,” McCoy joked.

Post Falls’ Jeff Moss was a little luckier: The ponderosa pine that fell into his yard took out only three cars and his wood fence, not his newly remodeled 15th Street home.

Drivers slowed to gawk at the scene where the tree trunk laid across the front of a Jeep, Ford Explorer and Chevy pickup. One man in a roofing truck rolled down his window and joked, “Bad place to park, huh?”

Moss wasn’t home when the tree toppled over, but his elderly mother was, and she was evacuated.

Moss’s sister-in-law, Linda Moss, kept her sense of humor even as a second ponderosa pine listed over her relative’s shop. Tree crews were on the way to top it before the tree fell.

“Now I just need to figure out how to do a Christmas card,” she said.

Avista Utilities spokeswoman Debbie Simock said about 8,700 customers in North Idaho were without power early Friday evening. That included 4,200 homes in Hayden and areas surrounding Lake Pend Oreille in northern Kootenai County, 880 in the Post Falls/Rathdrum area, 500 in Kellogg, 750 in St. Maries and 520 in Sandpoint.

Simock said the numbers were changing frequently. Sometimes to restore power and make a repair, crews must de-energize a line, which can result in additional outages, she said.

At least 2,000 additional customers in Kootenai County were still in the dark Friday evening. Kootenai Electric Cooperative advised members to prepare for an extended outage, spokeswoman Erika Neff said. There are many broken power poles, downed distribution lines and downed transmission lines, Neff said.

At the Hutton Settlement in Spokane Valley, high winds toppled a huge tree just outside Cottage 4, one of the agency’s nearly 90-year-old brick dwellings.

“Where the tree fell, there were three little boys asleep and it didn’t even wake them up,” said Ky Lehinger, an office worker at the settlement. Noise “like an earthquake” roused the house parent and older boys, however. By noon, a crane was hauling away the downed tree.

Spokane International Airport remained open, although two flights were canceled and other flights may be delayed because of windy weather in Seattle and Portland, according to airport spokesman Todd Woodard.

Staff writers Taryn Brodwater, Moriah Balingit, Alison Boggs, Jody Lawrence-Turner, Melodie Little, Laura Onstot, Mike Prager, Chris Rodkey and Richard Roesler contributed to this report.