KALISPELL - Crews were busy Monday night into the early morning hours Tuesday turning the lights back on in Flathead County.
“By 8 a.m. everybody was back on,” said Flathead Electric Cooperative (FEC) spokeswoman Courtney Stone.
Nine separate outages affected 1,800 FEC members Monday night as strong winds caused broken poles and downed power lines.
“Ashley Lake was the hardest hit, we did have two poles that snapped in the winds so, of course that took a little time to repair, Kila also saw a fairly large power outage, a feeder went down also due to a tree and kept about a 1,000 members in Kila out of power,” said Stone.
Stone said close to two dozen linemen worked through the night to restore power., "we have a full staff of lineman, we’re so grateful for them and so happy they were able to get everything fixed last night."
Stone said crews are prepared for continued gusty conditions on Tuesday and additional storms later this spring.
“Yesterday was pretty gusty and of course with spring here and the ground being thawed and lots of moisture in the ground that kind of created a perfect storm, shall we say, for a lot of trees to fall over yesterday but hopefully we’re past that now,” said Stone.
