Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Monday, December 18, 2006

4th power update from Puget Sound Energy

As of noon today here are the latest updates from Washington State's largest private electric utility on power outages and restoration:
The scope and severity of damage to Puget Sound Energy's electric system from Friday's windstorm is unprecedented. In many hard-hit areas, our crews are having to re-build the system from the substation to customers' doors – after downed trees and debris are cleared away. Crews now have successfully repaired the core backbone of the system – our high-voltage transmission grid – and as of midmorning Monday, they'd restored power to more than 525,000 of the 700,000 customers who lost power.

We're continuing to repair other portions of our transmission and distribution systems, with more than 420 crews, representing over 2,000 workers, involved in the restoration effort. Besides our local crews, PSE has enlisted nearly 170 additional crews from across the western United States and Canada to help restore customers' power, and two dozen more crews are arriving later today from Missouri. Because the storm's damage is so widespread, however, we believe it will take most of this week to restore power to everyone in the hardest-hit areas.

We plan to update this report twice daily – morning and evening – as restoration progress in specific locales proceeds and more refined estimates of final restoration times are known.
That's the latest update. If you have power, be thankful and conserve it, if you don't, please be patient and understanding.

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