Storm causes power outages

Roughly 12,000 Flathead Electric Co-operative members lost power Tuesday as storms blew through the Flathead Valley.

According to Flathead Electric spokeswoman Wendy Ostrom-Price, the first call came in from Kila at around 9:20 a.m. By the afternoon, there had been 67 outages, although most members were not without electricity for long and the number affected at any given time only reached roughly 4,000.

Wind gusts as high as 57 miles per hour were reported in the Flathead and more than an inch of rain inundated some areas.

Ostrom-Price said the hardest-hit areas were the north and west portions of the valley.

“We had outages as far west as our Libby service territory, east over to West Glacier and Essex, and down to Lakeside, along with points in between,” she said.

Local fire departments responded to 10 power-line emergency calls from Bigfork to Columbia Falls and Olney between 10:30 a.m. and 2:15 p.m.

“This was one of those fast and furious windstorms that we get, certainly not unusual in our neck of the woods,” Ostrom-Price said, noting that “we have heavily wooded rural areas, and where there are trees and power lines there will be outages.”

She said Flathead Electric encourages people to report outages and downed power lines, but warns people not to go near the lines and assume they are always live.