Winds as high as 120 mph snap power lines to Middle Bay, Chiniak and Pasagshak, difficult location means repairs are days away

High winds overnight snapped two poles supporting the power lines to Middle Bay, Chiniak and Pasagshak throwing those communities into darkness.

Kodiak Electric Association President and CEO Darren Scott told KMXT about a half-hour ago that people in the affected areas can expect a long outage, perhaps through the rest of the week.

While there is no way to monitor wind where the two poles snapped, Scott said on Pillar Mountain where KEA monitors wind near the turbines, overnight gusts were as high 120 miles per hour.

 

 

Scott said this is not a simple fix because of location. The snapped poles are roughly a mile inland from the Chiniak Highway near Heitman Lake.

 

He says there is no easy access, and at this point they are taking a two-pronged approach to get the materials and people into the area to make the repairs.

 

“Not far from where the Heitman Lake trail goes up, a little bit further south than that. Another set of poles. But very rough location.

“So we’re trying to find a way to get an excavator up there. Now we’re just kind of hand walking the trail and are trying to see if there is a trail, or any kind of trail we can make to get an excavator up there.

“If we can’t. The other option is getting a heavy lift helicopter from the mainland down but with the weather forecast we have and some of the weather issues they have that is several days away as well. So we’re kind of working at it from two fronts.

“But either way, it’s going to be a several day outage before we can get the lights on for those folks.”

Currently Anchorage is under a high wind advisory.

Kodiak is expecting more winds and lower temperatures near freezing in the days to come.