High winds have thousands without power across Western Washington.

As of Tuesday evening, roughly 11,000 Puget Sound Energy customers have been impacted spanning Bellingham down to Olympia, with an additional 8,000 customers without power across Western Washington.

That said, the bulk of the outages have been centered around the South Sound from SeaTac to Puyallup. At the peak of outages early Tuesday, over 65,000 customers were without power.

Windy weather kept crews busy all morning long. East Pierce Fire says their firefighters responded to 24 emergency calls between midnight and 7 a.m., the bulk of which were for downed trees and power lines.

The Lake Holiday neighborhood in Gig Harbor saw strong winds cause uprooted trees knock out power.

Two power poles were snapped like match sticks on Kenney Asmussen’s block.

“A lot of wind. We’ve never had anything like that around here,” said Asmussen. He says he felt his house start to shake and tree limbs started hitting his roof around midnight, Tuesday.

“I’m from the Bay area and lived though the earthquake of ‘89.  It felt a lot like that.  Everything shook and I don’t know if it was the amount of wind or all the trees falling at once. I’m not sure but it was like an earthquake. We came out with our flashlights but it was really just too dark. I had no idea all of this so it’s been quite an experience,” said Asmussen.

He added, “There’s a skylight on the other side of the house we can’t see from here. It’s still intact but it shattered it all.”

Peninsula Light Company is the provider for the Lake Holiday neighborhood.  Just under 350 people, like Kenney, lost power.  The company estimates power will be restored by 11 p.m. Tuesday.

Puget Sound Energy spokesperson, Andrew Padula explained how the rainy days before the windstorm made it easier for trees to topple in the wind.

“If there’s a lot of heavy rain or days of rain that could create the ground to be very saturated and if the wind starts to blow those trees could topple easily,” Padula said.