Outages expected to continue
By CANDACE CHASE
The Daily Inter Lake
Flathead Electric Cooperative returned power at about 4 p.m. Thursday to Bigfork, Ferndale, Swan Valley and areas along the east shore of Flathead Lake after about 19 hours without electricity.
Thousands of members of Flathead Electric Cooperative - including those in Kila, Marion, Kalispell, Creston, Many Lakes, Happy Valley and north Whitefish - lost power at about 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Nine crews in the Flathead and two in Libby worked throughout the night as did dispatchers and support staff. Crews restored power to the majority of customers between 2 and 3 a.m. Thursday.
People in Happy Valley had electricity restored at about 5 a.m.
Flathead Electric Cooperative's Communication Director Wendy Ostrom Price warned that people will continue to experience temporary outages as crews reroute and balance the load.
"If people, particularly those in Bigfork, continue to experience an outage, they should call the outage number at 751-4449," Ostrom Price said.
She said more than 3,600 residents had filed reports of outages since the severe wind and thunderstorm struck the valley.
About 30 power poles were downed or damaged in the unusually powerful storm. Where possible, crews rerouted power to restore service to those areas as quickly as possible.
"We had 16 poles down on Lower Valley Road that blew over," Stephanie Wallace, a cooperative spokeswoman said. "It was just unbelievable the strength the wind must have had. It was wind, not trees, that knocked them down."
She said the cooperative rarely experiences such a widespread, diverse storm.
Flathead Electric Cooperative trustee Alan Ruby agreed.
"In the last 28 years, I haven't seen anything like what I saw last night," Ruby said in a prepared statement.
Problems continued on Thursday.
At about 2:30 p.m., the Kalispell Police Department issued a press release announcing all traffic lights were out in the city of Kalispell. Drivers were instructed to treat all intersections as 4-way stops.
Ostrom Price said the on-again-off again traffic light problem was due to a problem at a substation near the community college and a transformer that was lost near Appleway Drive.
The major stoplight at Montana 35 in Bigfork remained out of commission until late Thursday afternoon.
According to Wallace, the problem in Bigfork was caused by trees falling on a large fabricated transmission pole on Holt Drive near the post office.
"Because it was a transmission line, we have a lot of work on our hands to resolve that issue," she said before power was restored.
The Holt Drive damage impacted residents in Bigfork, Ferndale, the east shore of Flathead Lake and Swan Valley. Crews from Flathead Electric and Mountain Power remedied the problem by installing two standard poles at the site.
Even after repairing the main transmission line, crews faced the uncertainty of finding other downed lines that fed electricity to subdivisions and individual homes in the greater Bigfork area.
Flathead Electric Cooperative continued to receive word of "straggler" outages from various areas Thursday afternoon.
"We did request three back up crews from Idaho," Ostrom Price said.
Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com