The nonstop rain over the weekend caused havoc for Homer Electric Association crews as they dealt with multiple power outages.
Keriann Baker with HEA told KSRM:
“Yeah, so last night, I can tell you almost exactly, we had 470 meters in Nikiski/North Kenai area. We had 17 meters that’s by the Sport Lake area. In Echo Lake, we had 160 members, that was the night before. On Halloween, we had up to, on the 30th and the 31st, we had up to 1,500 members at various times throughout that incident. Then, when you notice the bigger number having to correspond with some of the rain and the wind that we saw coming through the system and, I think if you looked at the areas north like Chugach and them, they had some significant outages. The ones on the 30th and the 31st of October, I can tell you, almost 100% of them were trees on the line. Just, one right after the other after the other.”
Baker said the most likely cause is due to the weather:
“That’s pretty much it. What happened is we’ve got various causes throughout like the one on Echo Lake was caused by a failed cutout. The one in Nikiski/North Kenai was a burned-up insulator. What usually happens to those kinds of things is those parts of the system will fail, but when the problem happens when it gets really, really, really wet like what we’re seeing. We’ve just seen nonstop rain. Our guys are working around the clock. We had one guy 24 hours straight finally went home. They’re all weather related, and we’ve got guys working as hard as they can restore them as quickly as they can. Frankly, we’ve seen a lot of patience by a lot of members. So we’re really appreciative of that.”
HEA wants to remind members that if you are experiencing an outage, visit HEA’s outage map or call (888) 868 – 8243.