SPOKANE, WA — Avista crews continued restoration efforts Thursday following a windstorm that damaged power infrastructure across eastern Washington and northern Idaho, leaving tens of thousands of customers without electricity.
Avista reported that approximately 75 percent of the roughly 80,000 customers impacted by Wednesday’s storm have had power restored. As of 10 a.m. Thursday, about 17,550 customers remained without service across more than 559 individual outage locations.
The utility said strong winds combined with saturated ground conditions caused widespread damage, with trees and vegetation falling into power lines and poles. Crews patrolled hundreds of miles of line on foot, by vehicle, and by helicopter once winds subsided to assess damage and prioritize repairs. Hundreds of power poles and miles of wire were affected, with some individual pole replacements taking up to eight hours to complete…