HEA customers started losing power across the peninsula at roughly 1:30 am this morning, initial reports were that nearly 1,300 customers were without power.
High winds causing damage to power stations and pushing trees into power lines worsened conditions throughout the morning, we spoke to Joe Gallagher with HEA who said many more customers than initially reported were without power.
Gallagher: “Strong winds have hit the Kenai Peninsula and this morning HEA is responding to several outages, actually we have 28 seperate outages across the peninsula impacting a total of 2,777 HEA members. These outages again are the result of the high winds we are finding trees blown into the power lines and damage to our facilities again as a result of the high winds that are still blowing hard across the Kenai Peninsula this morning.”
Gallagher said at this time HEA is struggling to restore power in Homer which is seeing the worst of the outages.
Gallagher: “Homer Electric crews continue to work this morning on power outages across the Kenai Peninsula, the system has been hit hard by the strong winds that are basically raking the Homer area and the whole Kenai Peninsula. The large outages we are dealing with right now are in the Homer area, Diamond Ridge road has about 514 members that are without power, the West Hill Road as you come into Homer is also without power with about 400 members and the North Fork Road area which is between Homer and Anchor Point, we’re out of power out there as well with about 400 HEA members experiencing a power outage.”
Gallagher said they have no estimated time on repair for these outages as the wind has yet to slow down.
Gallagher: “Very difficult at this point to give estimated times of repairs only because outages are still coming into HEA being reported to us so at this time we are trying to respond to some of the larger outages right now so we can get the most bang for the buck. Some of the largest outages we have right now would be from Boundary Ave in Soldotna to Robinson Loop that has about 1,000 members affected, we are also out from the intersection of the Sterling Highway and K-Beach road in Kasilof south to Ninilchik that has about 1,154 members affected.”
If you are still without power HEA asks that you report your outage using their outage hotline at 1-888-8outage
