Officials with Avista Utilities in Spokane say they hope to have almost all customers’ power restored in Spokane before Thanksgiving day after a storm packing winds as high as 71mph hit the city last Tuesday.
180,000 Avista customers lost power during last week’s storm. About 30,000 were still without power by mid-day Monday.
Avista Spokeswoman Jessie Wuerst says particularly hard hit was a large section of Spokane’s South Hill, where about a third of the current outages are located.
“One of the biggest challenges with the restoration is the poles are in rights of ways, in backyards and alleyways,and often crews have to physically carry poles, hand dig the holes, and sometimes that includes jackhammering through basalt.”
This is the worst outage in Spokane since the ice storm of 1996, when only about half as many customers lost power.
Wuerst says since that time there has been discussion of moving power lines from poles that are susceptible to falling trees to underground, but there are several reasons why that has not been a good option.
“That has a lot of challenges, particularly cost, and to put lines underground in the South Hill means getting through the basalt, and then when outages occur finding them underground is extremely more complicated.”
The Avista spokeswoman says they have a total of 650 people, many from outside the area, working 16 hour shifts to try to restore electrical service.