High winds wreak havoc

Winds estimated as strong as 60 miles per hour whipped through south Lincoln County Tuesday, ripping out trees and knocking out power to hundreds of area residents.

The storm wreaked havoc throughout northwest Montana, causing power outages around the region.

“Over all we’ve had between 90 and 100 outages impacting between 11,000 and 12, 000 members across our service territory,” said Wendy Ostrom-Price, public relations officer for Flathead Electrical Cooperative. “In and around our Libby area it’s difficult to say, but roughly up to 1,000 members were affected by outages at one juncture or another.”

Ostrom-Price said the cooperative’s crews were working around the clock to restore service as quickly as possible.

“Every one of our linemen were out through the night, along with substation workers, tree trimming crews and so on,” she said. “In restoring power, we prioritize the point at which we can restore the most members at one time , as well as critical infrastructure (hospitals, schools, etc…) and then incrementally try to bring everyone back on line as quickly as possible. Last night a primary focus was in Bigfork and the surrounding areas because a transmission line was damaged by a tree, which impacted four area substations, affecting around 7,000 members. So it was the largest outage in our service territory. We were able to redirect power from our Kalispell Substation to restore service, but reparations are ongoing.”

Outages were worsened in some areas when residents hurriedly turned electrical devices back on after power was restored, tripping breakers and causing additional outages.

“A lot of times we’ll restore an area, everyone turns everything back on and it trips it again – sometimes before crews have even left the site,” Ostrom-Price said. “It’s just a scramble right now.”

The power outages and downed trees from the storm resulted in the cancellation of classes at Libby schools Wednesday.

“We were told by Flathead Electric that power to the elementary school would not be available until, they didn’t even know when,” Barringer said. “But, because we had no power at the elementary school and we didn’t have power at Asa Wood, which is our kitchen, so by about 5:30 a.m. we had to make the decision to cancel school. The downed lines near the elementary and high school were also big safety issues. Flathead Electric did a great job cleaning up the trees around the schools and made it so we could have school on Thursday.”

In addition to power outages, phone service for Verizon customers was interrupted due to the storm. The service interruption precluded Lincoln County emergency management from responding to the situation.

“Normally E.M.A. would have been called,” said Lisa Oedewaldt, Lincoln County deputy emergency management adminstrator. “But due to the Verizon outage, dispatch was unable to reach me.”

Verizon service was restored in the early afternoon Wednesday.

“We don’t know exactly when in the night it went down,” said Jody Jones with Wireless Connection, a Libby-area Verizon dealer. “It came back at about 12:30 in the afternoon.”

Municipal crews and area residents worked side by side to help clean debris from streets and yards, while crews from the power company worked to clear lines.

Area resident Gordon Sullivan said the way the community members come together in response to these types of situations is what makes living in Libby special.

“You don’t see this in Portland, Ore.,” he said. “You don’t see it in Seattle, Wash. That’s what makes Libby the best place to live in the country, these people come together and help each other without worrying about anything more than helping out. They help their neighbors.”

Samuel Wilson and Megan Strickland of The Daily Inter Lake contributed to this report.