By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
High winds of up to 75 mph over the weekend took out power citywide for three hours Saturday, caused damage and prompted a number of calls to city agencies.
A news release today attributed the outage from 2:44 to 5:16 a.m. Saturday to “inclement weather.”
The highest gust during the storm was 75 mph recorded at 5:44 p.m. Friday, out of the south. Saturday’s highest gust was 56 mph out of the southwest, just after midnight, Sitka FAA station reported.
Rainfall was also high, measuring 2.71 inches on Friday, and .49 inch on Saturday, the report said.
Many calls related to outages and storm damage came in from Friday night through Saturday. A city log reads:
Friday, October 1
At 6:50 p.m. Sitka Police recorded a call reporting a carport blown into a power pole at 125 Granite Creek Road, but there was no impact to the system.
At 8 p.m. an outage was reported at a business in the 1200 block of Sawmill Creek Road, with repairs completed by 10 p.m.
At 9:22 p.m. a Galankin Island resident reported losing power after a tree fell on a line. The power was still out today.
At 9:26 p.m. police received a report of a power arc on a pole in the 1300 block of Halibut Point Road. Linemen responded and saw no damage, and no outage was reported.
At 8:38 p.m. power was lost from Green Lake after a tree came down and hit the guy line to the pole. The guy wire went into the transmission line just before the bridge to the NSRAA hatchery, city staff said. The City Electric Department said the road was closed from a mudslide before the hatchery earlier in the day. Plans called for clearing the road on Saturday, and fixing the guy wire. “Green Lake plant is dead at this time,” the log notes said. NSRAA operated on its own backup generator, until Green Lake was up again on Sunday.
Saturday
At 2:44 a.m. the city lost the main transmission line, knocking out power to the town. Electric generation and distribution crews spent more than two hours trouble-shooting and taking steps to restore power.
During the outage, several large power users went to back-up generation, the department said. Power was restored to the town by 5:15 a.m. and the log notes “everything back to normal” shortly later.
Electric Utility Director Scott Elder said responding to the high number of calls during the storm took an effort from every section of the department.
“I’m grateful for the effort of all departmental crews,” he said.
The National Weather Service said the rain amount falls short of the two-day record of 8.76 inches set on September 7-8, 1948. The more than 3 inches that fell this weekend doesn’t rank in the top 40 in the nearly eight decades records have been kept of rainfall on Japonski Island.
“The main threat was the wind,” commented NWS meteorologist Caleb Cravens, noting the risk of landslides. “You need both heavy rain and high wind and those were met, which increases the potential of the landslide threat.”
The weather service does not predict landslides, but forecasts when “conditions are favorable for landslides,” Cravens said.
