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Avista: just over 10,000 customers remain without power; about 5,300 gas customers affected
Summary
Avista told officials its crews and mutual-aid partners are restoring service after peak outages exceeded 30,000; the utility reported transmission damage in West Spokane, urged customer conservation and said gas restoration requires door-to-door safety checks for about 5,300 affected customers.
Heather Rosentrader, president and CEO of Avista, gave an operational update on restoration efforts and outage counts, saying the company had "just over 10,000 customers that are out of power" at the time of the briefing and that peak outages the previous day exceeded 30,000.
Rosentrader said 6,717 outages at peak were the result of proactive, preventative public-safety power shutoffs and that those customers had been restored; she said the remaining outages were due to active fire conditions, infrastructure damage or evacuation-related access limits. "We have identified significant damage specifically to portions of our transmission system, particularly in West Spokane," she said, and warned that until two transmission lines are repaired the system would operate at reduced capacity with risk of additional outages during high-demand hours.
On natural gas service Rosentrader reported about 5,300 customers remained without service and explained that gas restoration is more complex because technicians must visit every home to ensure repairs and safety before re-energizing. She urged customers not to attempt to restore gas service themselves and recommended conservation steps to reduce strain on the electric system while transmission repairs proceed.
