Windstorm Knocks Out Power In Anchorage Area
ANCHORAGE, Alaska—
Update: Power companies have
multiple crews working to restore power Wednesday morning in Anchorage
and surrounding areas caused by the wind storm. The Anchorage School District, Grace Christian, and UAA campuses in Anchorage, Eagle River-Chugiak, and JBER have canceled due to the power outages.
The Governor's office has announced that all "non-essential" state employees do not report to work.
As of 6:30 a.m., Chugach Electric said approximately 22,000 customers are without service. Multiple crew are "road hunting" down trees and lines.
Customers are asked to only call Chugach Electric if they see down lines that are a hazard.
Sarah Wiggers, with Chugach Electric, said the night darkness was making it hard for crews to located lines and "fingers crossed hoping noon will look a lot better for us."
Areas affected most by the outages under Chugach Electric are:
Debarr
Hillside
Boniface
Huffman
La Touche
O'Malley
Raspberry
Turnagain
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson said the "installation closed for today for non-essential personnel," and "this may not apply to all JBER organizations. Contact your supervisor if you are not sure."
All ASD after-school activites have also been canceled.
Matanuska Electric Association report outages continue to affect areas throughout Eagle River and parts in Wasilla, Houston, Butte, Meadow Lakes, Lazy Mountain and Talkeetna.
MEA said trees falling on power lines or uprooted resulted in damage to both the "high-voltage transmission and low-voltage distribution systems" and about 5000 customers were without power as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Brenda Hewitt, Public Information Officer with Alaska Department of Transportation, said all flights should be business as usual. Hewitt confirmed some passenger flights were diverted Tuesday night and no cargo flights have been affected.
This is a developing story. Please check KTUU.com and the Channel 2 newscasts for updates.
Original: A powerful wind storm struck Southcentral Alaska Tuesday night, causing widespread power outages in the Anchorage area.
Electrical outages hit the Hillside, Midtown, South Anchorage and near downtown. There were also reports of outages in the Eagle River/Chugiak area.
Burk Wick with Chugack Electric said late Tuesday night "We have lots of feeder and transmission lines out. We are kind of doing triage right now to determine where the problems are"
Chugach Electric did not have any firm estimates of the number of its customers that were without power, but Wick guessed it was more than 10,000.
Municipal Light & Power also faced widespread outages. A spokesman told Channel 2's Jason Lamb Tuesday night that he was estimating that 10-15-thousand of the utility's 30-thousand customers were without power.
There were no estimates about when service would be restored to affected areas.
The Anchorage Police and Fire Deapartments responding to numerous reports of downed trees.
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