A standing-room-only crowd spilled into the foyer at The Hall at Fauntleroy in West Seattle for a recent "town hall meeting" about King County's response to the mid-December wind and ice storms.

Highline and West Seattle were hit harder than many other areas of the county, so council members met there to hear from county departments, utility representatives and 140 citizens about what worked and what didn't.

Convening as a Committee of the Whole, the meeting was chaired by Councilwoman Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac.

Officials devoted most of the meeting to reports from King County Emergency Management, Seattle City Light, Puget Sound Energy, Public Health-Seattle & King County, and King County Metro Transit.

Southwest King County residents asked questions about the utilities' tree-trimming programs, power service repair priorities and the adequacy of current budgets for utilities.

People also want to replace overhead wires with buried lines.

The back-to-back windstorms blew in behind the wettest month on record, causing $24.8 million worth of damage in King County alone, according to Eric Holdeman, director of the county's Office of Emergency Management.

More than a million people had no electricity in the longest power outage in county history. Efforts to restore power were hampered by days of ice and freezing temperatures.

Schools and most businesses were closed. Many Highline and West Seattle homes were dark and cold for five days.

Bad weather also led to the deaths of eight people from carbon monoxide poisoning, five of them in Burien, and the illness of more than 200 other people.

The victims were in homes where charcoal barbecues or diesel generators were taken indoors to supply heat.

Officials also faced challenges in communicating with the public because 20 percent of area residents do not speak English as their day-to-day language.

A potential health problem resulted from the mid-December storms when 20 of Metro's 27 sewage pump stations lost electricity and spilled raw sewage into Puget Sound, said Don Tyler from the King County Wastewater Treatment Division.

The electrical system at the Barton Street pump station next to the Fauntleroy Ferry Dock shorted out during the storm. As a result, the sewage pump stopped functioning and about 7 million gallons of untreated sewage flowed into Fauntleroy Cove.

An estimated 59 million gallons of raw sewage got into Puget Sound from the West Point sewage treatment plant, Tyler said. The Murray Avenue pump station at Lowman Beach Park also lost power and sewage.

Only some sewage pumps have backup generators and fuel tanks are too small at some pumps. Fuel trucks dispatched to the pump stations became snowbound along with other vehicles stuck on the streets.

Another health-related problem was the loss of electricity at nine of 10 clinics during and after the storms, said Michael Loehr, preparedness manager for Public Health- Seattle & King County.

The county bus system was bogged down by the storms, too.

"West Seattle was one of the most affected areas," said Jim O'Rourke, operations manager for King County Metro Transit.

The long, articulated buses fared the worst in snowy conditions, O'Rourke said. Smaller, one-unit buses got better traction, but their tire chains frequently broke on cleared streets.

Metro's four radio channels were frequently overburdened.

"This was an area especially hard hit by the storm," said Sung Yang, chief of staff for Seattle City Light. The storm was the most expensive power outage in City Light history.

Half of the utility's 1 million customers were knocked off-line and 34 miles of wire had to be replaced, he said.

Some area residents suggested burying more electrical wires underground to avoid having trees and branches blown onto power lines suspended from poles.

Utility representatives said "undergrounding" is expensive, costing seven to 10 times more than putting up standard overhead wires strung pole to pole, Yang said.

It costs Puget Sound Energy customers an average of $1,000 to $3,000 per hookup to install electrical wires underground, said Jerry Henry, senior advisor to the chairman of that utility.

Regarding tree pruning, Yang said every electrical line in the City Light system is checked for interfering branches at least once every three to five years.

City Light spends upward of $12 million annually for tree trimming, he said.

People also recommended that utilities and county departments put more information on their Web sites.

Residents asked for better explanations to the public of how the city's electrical system is arranged. They want to see how City Light's "feeder system" is set up.

One man suggested King County put together a database listing all of the skills, including tree-pruning services, offered by private contractors in the area.

Others advised officials to include water and natural gas lines along with electrical power in emergency planning.

Another idea from the audience concerned reciprocity among firefighters.

There are numerous, fully trained firefighters living in West Seattle. Some work for the Seattle Fire Department while others are employed by other fire departments throughout King County.

If an earthquake made it impossible for firefighters employed outside Seattle to get to work, they would not be allowed to help out at any Seattle Fire Department station, a woman said.

She urged that reciprocal agreements be written among local fire departments to allow help from other firefighters.

One person recommended keeping public libraries open during emergencies.

Another suggested having some shelters that allow pets.

Yet another man advised county officials to include faith-based organizations in their emergency planning.

He recently traveled to New Orleans and learned that churches were the first responders in much of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at 206-932-0300 or tstclair@robinsonnews.com.