COEUR d’ALENE — County officials passed a pair of storm damage-related resolutions Friday to help homeowners and declare a disaster in North Idaho.

Commissioners passed a resolution to allow Community Development Director David Callahan to streamline the building permit process for those seeking to repair their homes due to the wind storm this week.

The accelerated damage repair permits will cost a flat fee of $100 and will remain available for the next 182 days.

“It will accelerate and streamline the process and allow us to take in more permits,” he said, adding many of the typical permit requirements will not be required, such as engineering plans. “There won’t be the same level of analysis that we normally have.”

The permits will allow homeowners to legally repair their homes back to normal, but it does not allow additional construction.

“They don’t get to add on a bathroom or anything like that,” Commissioner Dan Green said. “We just want to make it easier to get that work done.”

Commissioners declared a disaster emergency on Thursday because county officials are overwhelmed with providing emergency management services to those affected by the wind storm.

According to Sandy Von Behren, director of the Kootenai County Office of Emergency Management, the county has already assessed $1.7 million in damage, but that number is very likely to increase as other cities within the county tally their damage.

“That is just a preliminary estimate of the damage so far,” Von Behren said.

The emergency declaration allows the county to expend funds for the emergency responses that are not otherwise budgeted and may prompt other actions not normally conducted under county day-to-day operations.

“It also allows the county to make requests of the state when necessary and appropriate,” she said. “At this point a specific request has not been made.”

Public entities in the county are assessing damages to public infrastructure to assist the commissioners in determining the need to request state assistance.

“This process will take several days to a week to complete,” Von Behren said. “The decision to request state assistance will be based on the total countywide impact to public infrastructure and budgets.”

Meanwhile more than 1,000 homes are still without power in Kootenai County.

According to Jessie Wuerst, a spokesperson for Avista, as of Friday afternoon there were 5,634 Avista customers without power in Kootenai County, which is 10 percent of its total number of customers.

On Friday, crews were working in areas outside Coeur d’Alene, such as Spirit Lake and Rathdrum.

Avista has now restored power to more than 50 percent of its customers.

“They’ve also rebuilt the 42 major transmission lines and restored 23 substations that were taken out by the storm,” a Friday morning update stated. “Now the manpower will shift toward the labor-intensive work of rebuilding the distribution lines that deliver power to homes and businesses.”

Kootenai Electric Cooperative is also making headway, according to KEC spokeswoman Erika Neff.

“We have 4,333 members without power,” she said. “At the height of the storm, we had 56 percent of our system without power. Right now we are down to 18 percent.”