Avista initiates first public safety power outage for over 1,500 customers on windy Sunday

Winds whipped through Spokane on Sunday, carrying dust, red flag wildfire warnings and loss of power for thousands across the region.

Winds blowing through the region sustained speeds of 30 mph to as high as 50 mph, according meteorologist Daniel Butler with the National Weather Service. This combined with relatively low humidity and a dry cold front passing through the Pacific Northwest prompted the service to issue red flag warnings for wildfires in every county east of Wenatchee and into North Idaho.

Also wary of new fire starts, Avista Utilities shut off power to about 1,500 customers in the Indian Trail Neighborhood on Sunday afternoon. The service provider utilized a last-resort public safety mechanism to cut power during extreme wildfire risk conditions as a preemptive measure to avoid fire starts from power lines.

Avista restored power to nearly everyone it had cut power from by around 9 p.m. Sunday, expecting to fully return power in this area that night, said Avista Spokeswoman Annie Gannon.  

Another 1,600 other customers around Spokane also lost power Sunday evening, though unrelated to the intentional power shutoffs from Avista. As of Sunday evening, the utilities supplier is investigating the cause.

Announced in May, it’s the first time Avista has intentionally cut power under the public safety power shut-off mechanism.

During certain weather events, there’s an increased risk wind could knock a tree or other debris onto a power line, causing it to fall and potentially spark a fire.

With the power cut in the riskiest areas, it mitigates the danger of an electrical spark, said Vern Malensky, Avista director of electrical engineering and the program director for wildfire resiliency.

“We have advanced modeling technology that allows us to understand where safety concerns and risks are in the system,” Malensky said.

Taking into account wind speed and direction, temperature, field conditions, humidity and other metrics, models identified one circuit with “critical risk” out of Avista’s over 350 circuits.

“It allows us to be very surgical in how we apply this public safety power shut off tool,” Malensky said.

Avista temporarily turned off that circuit, removing power for over 1,500 customers in the Northwest Spokane neighborhood. The utilities company doesn’t have an estimated timeline for restoring power, Malensky said, as of Sunday evening it would depend on myriad conditions Avista models for.

In the meantime, Avista opened a community resource room from 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Mead High School, 302 W. Hastings Road, with charging stations, snacks and water available for powerless customers.

If the intentional outages were to persist into Monday , Avista would open a resource center at Lakeside High School, 5909 state Route 291, in Nine Mile Falls.

“As long as we are engaged with a public safety power shutoff, we will have that community resource center set up to support our customers in that area,” Malenksy said.

Dust presented another hazard on the breeze, with dust storms reducing visibility on roadways across central and Eastern Washington.

In the worst areas, drivers could see two or three car lengths ahead of them while driving, Butler said.

The dustiest areas, Butler said, were on Interstate 90 from Vantage to Spokane, especially in the Ritzville to Sprague stretch along recently worked farmland, and U.S. Highway 195 from Colfax to Spangle.

“With all the crops in Eastern Washington, on some of the recently worked fields it doesn’t take a ton of wind to kick up a ton of dust,” Butler said.

“Visibility can rapidly change so you can’t let your guard down when that is ongoing, but the best way would be to avoid (roads) all together, try to stay up to date with our warnings,” Butler said.

In critical weather events, the service sends automatic warnings to cellphones in the at-risk areas through service providers, similar to amber alert notifications.

If drivers find themselves caught in low-visibility dust storms, the service advises travelers to pull off the road, turn off their headlights and keep their feet off the brake pedal. That way, oncoming traffic won’t see just tail lights or headlights amid the dust and erroneously assume that vehicle is traveling and in a lane on the roadway, leading them to veer off into a ditch or hit the car pulled off the roadway.