Wind damage cuts power for thousands

MAT-SU — Winds gusting more than 60 miles per hour left thousands around the Valley without power Sunday anywhere from a few minutes to hours.

Blowing debris and damaged trees caused multiple interruptions throughout Matanuska Electric Association’s service area, said Lorali Carter, MEA manager for government and corporate communications. Beginning at about 11 a.m. Sunday, MEA crews have been working around the clock to repair the damage and restore power to affected areas.

The Big Lake are was hardest hit, Carter said, with about 300 people still without power late Monday afternoon.

“What I’m hearing from the crew in the Big Lake area is there is a lot of damage on the lines,” she said, adding crews described the area as a “war zone.”

At the peak of calls for service Sunday, about 7,000 were out of power, Carter said. By Sunday evening, all but about 2,500 had been restored, and about 500 people were still without electricity Monday morning.

“Outages were in different pockets around the Valley, everywhere,” she said. “Everyone’s still working so hard at the scenes, I’m not getting a lot of detailed information from them. A lot of problems are from trees blowing into the lines or debris.”

All crews from MEA’s offices in Big Lake, Palmer and Eagle River were called out to help with repairs, she said. At Point MacKenzie, 14 trees were removed from downed power lines only to have power interrupted there again.

Staff at Palmer City Hall had intermittent power Monday morning before electricity was restored permanently at about 10:30 a.m., while at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, no problems were reported.

Had the outage affected Mat-Su Regional, the hospital’s backup generator system would have kicked in, said Elizabeth Ripley, director of marketing and public relations.

“Our generator could power a city,” she said. “We have backup power. I was the administrator on call this past weekend and didn’t receive any calls about power issues.”

The hospital’s critical areas are set to automatically run off the generator, she said. “Say somebody was in surgery and the power went out, surgery is totally backed up and we can still continue.”

Anyone experiencing a power outage may contact MEA’s outage line at 746-7697. The automated system is designed to recognize incoming phone numbers and get information to dispatchers quickly, Carter said. It can also recognize if many phone numbers from a specific area are calling in to help pinpoint where an interruption could be.