Grant PUD crews work to restore power

EPHRATA - Grant PUD crews have been working around the clock since Sunday night to restore power to Basin customers affected by the night's lightning storm.

Reports of outages started coming in around 7:30 p.m. Sunday night, spokesperson Tom Stredwick said Monday.

Gusts reached as high as 54 mph, according to information provided by the Weather Channel's website.

"Things just lit up from there," he said. "Every community was impacted and some are still without power."

Stredwick said lineman began working to restore power in various areas at about 10 p.m.

"Crews worked through the night, as did customer service representatives and our dispatchers," Stredwick said. "Some are actually still working, they haven't gone to bed yet."

Extreme winds caused power lines to tangle, and in some cases, come down altogether, Stredwick said. In addition, some power poles were snapped in half or knocked over, he said.

Since power lines and poles were down in a lot of areas, crews were not able to restore power to the entire county that night.

"It's rare to have an outage like this," Stredwick said. "But the high winds and lightning did a lot of damage."

One of the areas that experienced significant damage was between Wheeler Road and Warden, he said. About 30 power poles in that area will need to be replaced, he said.

Crews are expected to continue to work through Monday night and part of Tuesday to turn power back on for customers, Stredwick said.

"We have about 40 to 50 line workers alone out there working to restore power," he said. "They'll continue to work until all power is restored."

As of press time Monday, areas that were still without power included parts of Moses Lake south of Interstate 90 and parts of Warden. Some customers in the Ruff/Schrag area were also without power at the time.

Stredwick said power is expected to be restored to all affected customers by late Tuesday.