As last night’s windstorm moves out of the region and winds begin to subside, Avista crews and staff are fully engaged in responding to widespread electric outages. Assessment and restoration efforts began last night, and crews will continue working around the clock until all customers have power restored. At the height of the storm, 60,988 Avista electric customers were without power. As of 10:30 a.m. today (Thur), approximately 33,299 Avista electric customers are without power, with more than 503 separate outage incidents.
All available Avista crews are working on the outages, including 41-line crews and 13 vegetation management crews.
Outages on Avista’s system began at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evening. Across the region, fallen trees contacting electric lines and equipment have caused extensive damage to both transmission and distribution systems.
As Avista’s restoration efforts continue, safety remains our top priority. The number of trees and branches down has created challenging conditions for crews to complete outage assessments and restoration. As it is safe to do so, Avista continues to assess the extent of the damage and restore power. Assessments may take 24 hours or more in some cases, due to the widespread damage, and outages may last multiple days.
Detailed estimated restoration times are being developed as we complete ongoing damage assessments, and we will keep customers updated as more information becomes available. Restoration efforts in the Spokane area are moving quickly and are expected to be mostly complete by the end of today. However, in Colville, St. Maries, and the Silver Valley, restoration work may extend into the weekend.
Safety during an outage
We want our customers to stay safe. With this storm, trees have brought a significant number of power lines down. Customers should treat all power lines as if they are energized. Customers should stay away from any downed power lines, not attempt to remove limbs from downed or sagging power lines, and should not drive over power lines. If customers see a downed power line, they should call 911 immediately and then Avista at (800) 227-9187 to report its location.
Avista suggests customers take the following steps during an outage:
- Turn off all the appliances that were on before the power went out.
- Unplug electronic equipment, including computers.
- Leave a light or radio on as an alert when power has been restored.
- Help Avista crews working in a neighborhood know which homes have power by turning on the front porch light.
- Do not wire an emergency generator into a home’s electrical system, unless there is a disconnect switch to separate generated power from Avista’s distribution system. Back feed into power lines could injure or kill a lineman working to get electricity restored.
- Use a generator only to run specific appliances and locate it outside with the exhaust facing away from the house so poisonous carbon monoxide fumes do not enter the home.
Restoration process
To restore power in an outage, we focus on restoring power to critical infrastructure first, such as transmission lines and substations, and emergency facilities like hospitals. These restoration efforts may not be as visible to customers, given the location of this infrastructure across Avista’s system. Once critical customers and transmission lines are restored, crews then work to make repairs that will restore power along impacted distribution feeder lines to a larger number of customers. This will leave some customers without power while their neighbors have been restored. Avista crews will come back through to restore individual outages in neighborhoods, which means customers may see service people in their neighborhood multiple times.
