Tuesday’s early morning wind storm damaged up to 11 transmission structures on Idaho’s Hwy 95, south of Potlatch and north of Moscow. The poles were likely pulled down in a domino effect, with wires pulling down the next structure and each smashing into the highway.
The slideshow at the top of this post shows the transmission line damage and restoration on Hwy 95 south of Potlatch.
Crews from several parts of Avista’s service territory worked to safely remove the poles and wire from the roadway, frequently using chainsaws and wenches to heft the debris to the side of the road. New steel transmission structures and assorted items were delivered to the site on Tuesday afternoon. Erecting those structures will take into Wednesday at least. Just over 1,100 customers were impacted by this outage.
Across our service territory Tuesday, Avista employees worked tirelessly to restore power and keep customers up to date. At its peak roughly 45,000 customers were without power. As of 6:15 p.m. Tuesday night, just 6,600 customer remain without power. Due to the extent of the storm’s damage some customers will remain without power at least through early Wednesday morning.
For the most current information on outages
click here.