PORT ORFORD — As the weather system that brought high winds and waves passes inland, coastal emergency crews, businesses and residents are only now beginning to respond to the disasters left behind.

 Heavy rain was an ongoing issue in many areas, as weather spotters reported inches falling within hours at several areas on the coast and inland.

 Areas south of Coos Bay were hit hard, with several trees down across or near power lines on U.S. Highway 101 and on Monday, amid ongoing high winds, power, telephone and cable crews were fixing the problems.

The Coos Bay Fire Department responded to 14 calls Monday and early this morning, six of them for downed power lines, according to Battalion Chief Mark Anderson. Five career staff and two cadets handled the calls.

“The chaos started about 2 o’clock,” Anderson said. “We had 12 calls from 2 until midnight and two more after that.”

All the fires were extinguished before they spread to structures, he said.

Throughout most of the weekend, the weather station at the Southwest Oregon Regional Airport reported wind gusts of around 40 mph or so. But in the early afternoon on Monday, gusts topped out at 66 mph — and at about the same time roofs were being torn off some houses locally and a sailboat in Charleston had its sails ripped to shreds.

Port Orford hit hard

Much of Port Orford was without power, phone and cell phone contact on Monday, but that didn’t stop several folks from visiting the town’s main attraction: the fishing dock.

In a town where the dock can be considered the heart of the community — many of the town’s more than 1,000 people depend on it for employment — major problems could put the town on life support.

The situation Monday was not quite as dire — more like a visit to an emergency room on a weekend.

It may yet be a day or two before the Port of Port Orford, NorCal Fisheries and Hallmark Fisheries can begin to asses the damage.

Rocks the size of small car wheels were tossed in the middle of the dock. The Hallmark buying station, at the far southwest end, was tossed around and moved off from its anchored position after the cables holding it down were broken.

Refrigerated semi-truck trailers were pushed against big fish totes that were, in turn, pushed up against the NorCal buying station office which itself was pushed against the edge of the dock. Totes were broken and smashed.

A fenced storage area on the northwest side of the dock was obliterated. A truck and some heavier equipment was all that remained.

That destruction happened on Sunday and early Monday during the strong winds and high tide with wind waves that were as big as 40 feet high — waves big enough to make the buying stations on the dock look tiny.

But what has some folks even more concerned is the ocean swell that is continuing today. The National Weather Service forecast is calling for swells out of the southwest at 30 feet or more. It has issued a high surf warning for the South Coast.

“Storm-force winds offshore have diminished, but they generated very large waves of 25 to 30 feet on the open ocean, which will continue to move onshore through Tuesday evening,” it said.

Those waves will continue to batter the jetty that creates a safe harbor for the small Port Orford boats that are let down in the water via huge cranes to fish. On a day like Monday, that harbor was safe for no one.

Waves broke the entire length of the jetty, overtopping it with nothing but white water and making the dog-legged breakwater disappear from view. First, the seas would splash against the joint in the middle, where fishermen and port officials have said for years the jetty is weak and poses a danger. Next, waves would spread both directions, crashing as it went, one huge layer of foam-like sea.

Some of the larger waves crashed on the northwest side of the dock, sending seawater ankle-deep – 3 feet deep at high tide, some fishermen said – spreading across the dock itself.

A handful of fishermen and curious onlookers visited the dock late Monday, after the winds died down. Most, if not all, the boats and their trailers were anchored down to the dock with cables. All of the boats were still upright late Monday.

Ongoing outages

Some Bandon-area residents remain without power this morning (Schools in Bandon remain closed, and tonight’s City Council meeting has been cancelled, as well.) and Charleston-area residents lost power Monday afternoon. Telephone calls to Coos Curry Electric were met with a busy signal throughout the early morning hours today.

But they weren’t the only ones whose digital clocks were left blinking when the power returned.

Many Coos Bay folks were still without power this morning. According to Pacific Power public information officer Tom Gauntt, 1,800 customers remained in the dark at 7 a.m. today. This was down from 2,561 customers reported to be without lights at 5 p.m. Monday.

“We had significant damage, but it’s something that can be worked on,” Gauntt said, adding that Coos County crews are not assisting in the harder hit areas to the north, where utility crews from Eastern Oregon and Salt Lake City were brought in.

The windstorm has created difficulty for all of the utility companies in Coos County, according to a Coos County Sheriff’s Office press release.

In Powers, the local landline telephone service has been interrupted. Many residents in the 439 prefix have no dial tone, and cannot call out. City officials were advised that service should be restored by this afternoon.

The U.S. Coast Guard, too, was kept busy.

The storm may have left the coast, but two HH65C Dolphin helicopters and their crews from the North Bend Sector Air Station assisted other USCG crews in lifting residents from their flooded homes in the Tillamook and other areas in Oregon and Washington.

Bar closures remain in effect, the USCG said, and include Quillayute River, Grays Harbor and Cape Disappointment in Washington and the Columbia and Tillamook rivers in Oregon.

The NWS issued a flood warning for the Coquille River on Monday night, saying that the Coquille River at Coquille could flood and the South Fork of the river at Myrtle Point could surpass flood stage and cause minor flooding.

At 6:30 p.m. on Monday, the South Fork was at 33.1 feet. Flood stage is at 38 feet and was forecast to reach that at around 3 a.m. today and crest at 39.5 feet around 5 a.m., dropping below flood stage by this afternoon.

Residents could expect widespread flooding of agricultural land, along some sections of state Highway 42 downstream from Myrtle Point and along the highway to Powers.

The nearshore waters forecast calls for ocean swells building to 28 feet today, then dropping quickly to around 17 feet on Wednesday, with scattered showers in the forecast. The coast will see continued showers today, tapering off over the next few days.