Widespread power outage snarls traffic in Kalispell
Daily Inter Lake | Daily Inter-Lake | UPDATED 13 hours, 15 minutes AGO
A Flathead Electric Cooperative crew works on a utility pole on Sixth Street East in Kalispell on Wednesday. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
A patchwork of nearly 23,000 Flathead Electric Cooperative customers were without power for a few hours on Wednesday afternoon.
The co-op said equipment failure at a main delivery point was to blame for the outage that spanned the Flathead Valley. The bulk of the outages were in the Kalispell area, with patches of outages reported near Kila, along Farm to Market Road, in the West Valley area, along U.S. 2 in Evergreen and in the Happy Valley area.
“Our crews are actively working to restore service as quickly and safely as possible,” the co-op stated in a media release.
“We understand how disruptive this is and appreciate your patience while we work on a solution.”
Traffic signals were out across much of the area during the outage. The co-op advised drivers to treat intersections as a four-way stop.