Lightning, rain cause electrical outages

MOSES LAKE — A lightning strike during a Monday morning thunderstorm cut power to customers in the Warden and Moses Lake areas, while the same storm resulted in other outages throughout Grant County.

The outages affected about 5,500 customers countywide, said Christine Pratt, PUD public information officer.

“They were all weather-related,” she said. “There were issues all around the county.”

The rain and lightning caused scattered outages throughout the entire county, she said. The biggest outage involved a pole carrying 115kV lines that got on the wrong end of a bolt of lightning.

“We had lightning hit a transmission structure,” Pratt said

The lightning strike occurred near Warden, damaged the pole and broke some of the lines, Pratt said. That caused electrical disruptions in and around Warden and Ruff, on the east side of Moses Lake and in areas east and southeast of Moses Lake.

“It affected a whole bunch of people because it was a transmission line,” Pratt said.

Transmission lines are high-voltage and transmit electricity from the generating source to substations. Distribution lines are low-voltage and deliver power from substations to individual customers.

The outage was reported at about 8 a.m. Monday. Of all the customers affected countywide more than half, 2,766, got power back within about 15 minutes, according to data released by the PUD. Another 1,021 had their electricity restored within about 90 minutes.

For the rest it took a little longer — an additional 993 had power back after about two hours, and the outage lasted about six hours for 499 customers. Electricity was restored to all customers by about 9 p.m. Monday, Pratt said.

More than 50 PUD employees worked to restore electricity throughout Monday, according to the PUD data. Pratt said the cost of activating additional crews hasn’t been determined yet.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.