Heavy winds knocked out a number of Kenai Peninsula residents’ power Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Homer Electric Association restored power to most of those customers by Wednesday afternoon, but there are still outages on the south side of Kachemak Bay.
HEA’s Joe Gallagher said as of 10:30 am Thursday morning there were approximately 150 customers without power in Seldovia, a few outages in Halibut Cove and Port Graham; and the entire village of Nanwalek lost power. Gallagher said the bulk of the work will be in Seldovia.
“A lot of work to be done over there, trees [are] on the line and electric facilities suffered a lot of damage.” We’ll be working there all day Thursday and we hope to make some progress. It’s very likely this restoration work, because of the nature of the damage, is going to take several days,” said Gallagher.
Seldovia Police Chief Hal Henning says around midnight during the storm the town saw 51 to 57 mph winds with gusts as high as 86 mph.
“The captain at the ferry Tustumena advised they had peak gusts of about 81 knots or 93 mph right between 2:00-3:00 am,” said Henning.
Chief Henning says those winds damaged the town substantially but there were no injuries.
“We have a lot of debris. Roof debris, siding debris [and] tree debris blowing; high winds, high rain [and] a little bit of local flooding. About a foot and a half of water on Main Street and multiple trees down on homes including my own,” said Henning.
Henning says Seldovia residents are pulling together to clean up. Most of the roadways are clear and most of the people in town have power.
“A majority of the outages, I believe, are out the road in Seldovia Village,” said Henning.
Gallagher said HEA was sending crews from both Kenai and Homer to address all the power outages on the south side of Kachemak Bay.
Nanwalek is the last community on HEA’s distribution system. Gallagher said there was likely a single choke point cutting power off from the entire village.
“There’s a line that runs from Port Graham over to Nanwalek and we believe somewhere along that line there’s a tree on the line that has taken it down,” said Gallagher.
Gallagher expects work to continue through the weekend.
