Power outages along Holmes Point Drive Northeast in Kirkland have skyrocketed this year leaving city officials and Puget Sound Energy (PSE) scrambling to find solutions.

According to PSE dat has shown 14 outages since 2013 along the Inglewood 15 circuit that follows the course of Holmes Point and serves some 500 customers. Ten of these outages have happened since January and most of them have been caused by trees or branches falling on the wires.

Joachim Veith lives off Holmes Point and said the road, which winds through a portion of St. Edward State Park, has been closed approximately four times in the last two weeks.

“It’s really unbelievable,” he said.

Falling trees will block the road, leading to a closure as officials clear the road and forces residents to use the southern access point leading to increased congestion and commute times.  There are only two access points to the area off of the main thoroughfare of Northeast Juanita Drive.

The power lines cross Holmes Point 10 times between the top of the hill at Juanita Drive to the bottom where it levels out. Many trees hang across the road from the elevated slopes of the southern side.

“This area is especially tricky,” Veith said. “Even in good times it’s looking very scary.”

While power outages are inconvenient, Veith said concerns about trees falling on cars is more nerve wracking.

Erin Devoto is the Public Works Superintendent for the city of Kirkland and is in charge of coordinating a response to the problems along Holmes Point.

“The power outages are kind of due to a combination of the fact that there are above ground power lines and an aging tree infrastructure,” she said.

This winter has been the wettest on record with nearly 30 inches falling between December and March, 10 inches more than either of the last two years according to the Seattle Weather Blog.

This leads to greater soil saturation and an erosion of compact soil around the bases of trees. During a wind storm, the force of the wind can more easily topple these trees, Devoto said.

In response, the city is looking at clearing some trees from the downhill, northern side of the road in St. Edward State Park, for which it is easier to get approval.

The southern side of the road is a patchwork of private and public owners and varying degrees of easement the city can work within.

A steep slope on the southern side also makes tree removal complicated as the city tries to minimize landslide risk.

“We have to be purposeful on which trees we take down, we can’t just go in and wholesale start taking trees down,” Devoto said.

Preserving a healthy forest canopy is also important for the area’s ecosystem, Devoto said.

The city is bringing a geotechnician out this month to make recommendations on which trees can be removed.

PSE also has a vegetation management division which trims tree limbs on a rotating three- to- four-year basis PSE Municipal Liaison Manager Andrew Swayne said.

In some areas the company has also installed tree wires, which are semi-insulated instead of typical exposed metal wires. These allow a branch or tree to fall on the wires without tripping the circuit unless the wire is severed.

Swayne said they have received a lot of questions from residents about running the lines underground, but due to PSE guidelines molded by the state, the cost of doing so would lie entirely with the customers.

Under two company bylaws, Schedule’s 73 and 74, if a government agency request cables to be buried, PSE must assume the majority of the cost. If citizens make the same request, they must pay for it entirely.

“When we do an underground conversion, that’s originated by a request from outside of the company, then we have to follow those rules,” Swayne said.

However, occasionally PSE decides it is in their best interest to underground wires if repairs and maintenance becomes too costly, Swayne said.

But PSE is looking mainly at vegetation management right now, Swayne said.

“As long as the lines are overhead, the number one issue is effective management of the trees,” he said.

For Veil, he said the number of outages in his neighborhood hasn’t decreased, but the repair times have become shorter, which he said was a positive development.

During the last windstorm on March 14 his power was out for around eight hours.

“For the severity of the storm and the magnitude of affected households that was not too bad,” he said.

But until the power lines are routed underground or hazardous trees are cleared from the road, residents will likely continue to see frequent power outages and road closures along Holmes Point.