November Wind Storm
Restoration work continues today
Crews are out in full force again today as we continue working around the clock to restore power to customers affected by Tuesday’s windstorm. We have more than 150 line crews, 70 tree crews and hundreds of staff members working 24/7 to support the work out in the field. We’ve restored power to more than 96% of customers.
We now have all substations back in power and continue working to repair damage on our local distribution lines – the lines that serve individual neighborhoods and smaller pockets of customers. Unfortunately, crews are reporting additional damage at many locations, which will need to be repaired as well. Much of this work is time-consuming and slow-going, as it requires extensive work yet restores power in much smaller numbers, such as to 5, 10, or 20 customers at a time.
In some of our hardest hit areas, like Mirrormont and Hobart/Maple Valley, we have hundreds of fallen trees tied up in our power lines, which require tree crews to safely remove using specialized equipment before line crews can begin their work. We have crew resources dedicated to completing this work, but it will take time.
We also continue to prioritize restoring outages that are impacting schools. We’re confident that nearly all schools will have their power back on in time for the school day tomorrow and are proactively coordinating with schools so they can help plan.
While we’ve made steady progress over these past several days, for our customers still without power, we know the challenges of being without power for this extended period. We appreciate your patience—we are working as hard as we can to restore your power as quickly as possible.
