On Thursday, Dec. 18, the first winter salvo sent the Woodinville Fire & Life District into emergency mode, facing four inches of quickly falling snow and ice, as well as dour weather forecasts for the immediate future.

“Access was the biggest thing,” Chief Dennis Johnson said.

“When you take a 40,000- pound fire truck and try to move it around on those icy, uphill roads it gets compromised.”

Johnson said the department set up its Emergency Operations Center the following day but was granted a reprieve by the forces of nature as well as the foresight of the community.

“We didn’t get the wind we thought we were going to get,” he said, “and that’s good because the wind can cause us a whole lot of grief.”

He said he was thankful most residents used a common sense approach and stayed off the roads.

“Because of that they made our call volume tolerable.”

On Sunday, Dec. 21, a fire engine and aid car got stuck in an uphill climb on the way to a local call, Johnson said.

“We had the city of Woodinville plows come and pull us out,” he said.

It was not a critical situation for the callers, he said. Other than that, it had been a slow week, with no fire calls.

“It’s been abnormally normal for call volumes,” Johnson said.

“That’s the one good thing about snow--it slows everybody down to a crawl so if they hit something, generally they’re not going to get hurt.”

Across the freeway in Bothell, Public Works crews were similarly working round-the-clock.

“We got a leg-up on the anti-icing even before the deep snow hit,”  Bothell Public Information Office Joyce Goedeke said.

“We’re pretty pro-active when it comes to dealing with weather conditions that are abnormal. So we were miles ahead and are in much better shape than we might have been. The biggest thing now is getting all the drains open.”

Power was lost for Woodinville citizens in the Lake Leota area from 5:30 a.m. on Christmas morning until approximately 2 p.m., Pacific Sound Energy spokesperson Dorothy Bracken said.

“There was heavy snow on some tree limbs and they broke off into the power lines along the Woodinville-Duvall Road, outside the city limits. One power line went down, but was restored by two-o’clock,”  she said.