Winds knocked out power to tens of thousands

Power is out for many electrical customers throughout the region, including in Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Lewiston, Grangeville and the Palouse. At 7:30 a.m., the utility company reported that nearly 25,000 service connections were without power, the majority of them in the Palouse region, including Lewiston, Moscow, Grangeville, Rosalia and Genessee. At the peak of the storm, Avista had 45,000 customers with outages. That number had been cut by nearly half at 2 p.m. and then 11,000 a half hour later, according to Avista’s website. Debbie Simock, communications manager for Avista, said 11 poles in an important transmission line near Potlatch were taken out and ground access to the line was blocked by numerous downed trees. Transmission line damage was also reported near Grangeville. “The storm just wreaked havoc on the southern portion of our service area,” Simock said. Some outages may persist into Wednesday, she said. Moderate-sized outages were also reported in the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene areas. One Spokane outage had darkened the traffic light at Monroe Street and 14th Avenue along with the adjacent shopping center. But nearly all Spokane-area customers were back on line by 2:30 p.m. Inland Power and Light Co. had 700 without power in Pullman and Colfax and maybe another 300 in scattered outages in their service region. Kootenai Electric Cooperative reported that 200 customers were without power this morning, which was down from a peak of 500 overnight. Check for outages via Avista’s website or call 1-800-227-9187 to report a problem.