Lincoln County homes still in the dark

Icy weather continues to thwart Inland Power and Light crews in their efforts to restore power to about 2,800 customers in Lincoln County. Utility spokeswoman Catherine Markson said a small number of customers may not have power restored until Wednesday. The majority, however, should be back on by then. “We made terrific progress, but the weather is just not letting up,” she said. Most recently, a high-voltage Bonneville Power Administration transmission line serving a substation near Davenport went down, knocking out power to 800 homes. Markson said BPA expects to have service restored quickly. Much of the trouble isn’t related to substations, but rather to distribution lines, which are spread across the county and affect pockets of homes. In addition to downed lines, 24 power poles have broken in the recent spate of cold weather. Customers are urged to call the utility at (877) 668-8243 to report outages. Also, Markson reminded people that downed powerlines should always be assumed to be live, and urges people to use caution around them. “We’ve got everything we can thrown at this thing,” Markson said. “We’re working as hard as we can to get things up and going.”