SEATTLE (AP) — Crews worked Sunday to restore power after windstorms pummeled parts of Washington state and Oregon over the weekend and left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, officials said.
Puget Sound Energy said Sunday that since the peak of the storm it had restored electricity to 147,000 customers. As of 2:30 p.m., about 148,000 customers remained without power, it said.
The utility reported downed power lines and poles and substation outages. In a statement on its website, it said some customers could be without power for “multiple days” due the damage to its system.
Other utilities in the two states were working to get the power back on for others.
Thousands had been without power Sunday morning in parts of Oregon after strong winds downed trees, KOIN-TV reported. A power failure was blamed for triggering a sewage spill in Clark County that officials said was contained, the outlet reported.
The storm brought winds that registered gusts of about 60 mph (96 kph) at Sea-Tac Airport in Washington, the National Weather Service in Seattle said.
Alaska Airlines said it grounded all its flights between 4:20 a.m. and 5:15 a.m. Sunday after a power outage in the Seattle area, where its operations are based.
Airline spokeswoman Oriana Branon said the power went out around 3:30 a.m. and came back on about an hour and a half later.
She said 27 flights were delayed and five were cancelled. Inconvenienced customers were being offered compensation on a case by case basis, she said.
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