Power restored in Soldotna after outage that affected 7,000

The company was still repairing some single outages Wednesday.

A “significant” power outage that affected about 7,000 Homer Electric Association customers in Soldotna last Tuesday night had been mostly restored as of 6 a.m. last Wednesday, HEA reported.

The company was still repairing some single outages Wednesday.

The outage, first reported late Tuesday, was said to be in response to extreme weather, including winds of up to 35 mph that caused trees to fall on power lines. A winter weather advisory was issued for the western Kenai Peninsula on Tuesday afternoon in response to expected freezing rain and ice accumulations of up to one-tenth of an inch.

HEA said in an update last Tuesday night that 10 linemen were called to respond and had been dispatched throughout the region. At around 11:30 p.m., HEA reported that they were restoring some circuits that would allow them to assess and target specific outages, and that power would be restored to some members as a result.

“We have devoted a lot of manpower throughout Soldotna in an effort to restore the power as quickly as possible,” HEA wrote in the 11:30 p.m. update. “However, with 7,000 members without power it will be difficult to restore power to everyone tonight and some members will have a longer outage than we would prefer.”

Live information about power outages can be found on HEA’s outage map at outage.homerelectric.com.

Reach reporter Ashlyn O’Hara at ashlyn.ohara@peninsulaclarion.com.