Chris Veatch examines the damage from a tree that blew over from high winds and crushed the house he owns with Mollie Hogan on NE Jones Road in Bend on April 7, 2017. (Andy Tullis/Bulletin photo)

At 11 a.m. Thursday, Mollie Hogan and Chris Veatch signed their last papers and picked up the key for their new home near Pilot Butte. They moved a few items in, but decided not to stay in the new house for the night.

Less than 24 hours later, high winds toppled a towering ponderosa pine, sending it crashing through the kitchen and living room.

Instead of spending the weekend moving in to their new home, Hogan and Veatch will be spending it working with their insurance company, and looking for a furnished vacation rental where they and their two dogs can stay for the estimated six months it will take to make the house livable.

“It’s devastating,” said Hogan, 46. “We were so joyous about the opportunity to move into our new house, and woke up the next day to find out it was collapsed.”

Strong winds buffeted Oregon and Washington from late Thursday through the day Friday, bringing down trees and knocking out power to tens of thousands.

The National Weather Service reported a gust of 58 mph three miles southeast of Bend early in the day, and unofficial measurements taken at Mt. Bachelor recorded a 99 mph gust at the top of the Pine Marten chair.

Bend Fire Department Battalion Chief Dave Howe said his day started by watching a tree fall down in his rear view mirror on Delaware Avenue as he was headed in to work.

The day only got more eventful, he said, with firefighters chasing reports of trees across roads and on houses, vehicles and power lines.

Howe said there were no reported injuries, and only one small fire, when a falling tree severed the service line of a home on SE Emerson Avenue. Twenty-eight nonmedical calls, nearly all wind-related, came in to the department between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m.

“When we have an event like this, we still have the heart attacks and the skinned knees and the car accidents and all of that,” Howe said. “A windstorm just adds more on top of that.”

Howe said Friday’s storm was notable in how widespread the damage was. He said there have been storms that wreaked more severe damage across a limited area — Howe recalled the 2009 New Year’s Day storm that knocked down 200 trees in Shevlin Park — but none he can remember that took out trees in every corner of the city.

Three 100-foot-plus ponderosas were blown over at Drake Park, and a fourth cut down due to concerns over its stability. Sasha Sulia, superintendent of park operations for the Bend Park & Recreation District, said a blown-over tree narrowly missed a restroom at Farewell Bend Park, and leaning trees were cut down at Juniper Park. District personnel visited trails and parks to assess damage, she said.

Bend arborist Wade Fagen said it had been a long day of cleaning up damaged limbs and trees for him and others in the field, with more work to come over the coming days.

Fagen said contrary to popular belief, wet soil is not a major factor in trees uprooting in high winds. Rather, he said it’s often the result of years of underwatering.

“For trees to grow in Bend, Oregon, especially east of 97, they need to be watered,” Fagen said, referring to U.S. Highway 97. “Everybody’s getting into water conservation, so consequently, trees’ roots die back and they don’t hold in our sandy soil.”

Fagen said it’s not the large woody roots seen at the base of an upended tree that secure it to the ground, but the fine roots branching off of the larger ones. An urban tree that grew to 150 feet with regular watering would have an expansive root system to match, he said, but when watering is sharply reduced, the finer roots die off, leaving that tree with a root system better suited to a 50-foot tree.

“I think it’s one of the worst wind storms — I almost always say that — but it’s one of the worst storms I’ve seen in my adult life, at least since the 1980s,” Fagen said.

National Weather Service forecasts are predicting much lighter winds overnight and into Saturday, with Saturday’s strongest gusts around Bend topping out at just over 20 mph.

— Reporter: 541-383-0387, shammers@bendbulletin.com