The scale of a windstorm’s damage is difficult to comprehend.  

After recent windstorms in March and December caused massive outages, the level of coordination and boots on the ground to tackle the gargantuan task was already underway days before weather conditions took a turn for the worse. 

Avista Spokesman David Vowels said that from the linemen and contract crews ready to deploy to the support staff behind the scenes, cleaning up the effects of a storm requires a sea of hands. 

“It’s a big logistical lift,” Vowels said. 

The March 12 windstorm created outages for more than 60,000 people. About 80,000 were affected by outages in the storm Dec. 17. 

As the director of operations for Avista, Paul Good is used to looking at the big picture when it comes to storm damage. 

Avista is a member of the Western Region Mutual Assistance Group, and in the days leading up to weather indicating a major storm, the utility company begins sending messages to other utilities and contractors that a request for help may be coming.  

“We'll put out a request or a notice that we have significant weather coming into our area and that we may need support from other utilities," Good said. “Likewise, we receive them as well and figure out how many resources we could release.”  

Avista staff also begin checking with contract loggers across utilities. Once major outages occur, the contractors will go to the utilities they contracted with and request release.  

“As the storm hits, we're looking at where it’s hitting, how it’s hitting. We know pretty quick how much damage is happening to the system that we need to ask for external help,” Good said.    

Avista coordinators sort through the fastest-arriving contractors to ensure that outages are repaired swiftly. 

“With us being disbursed across multiple districts, it is an all hands-on deck approach for the company,” Good said. 

Peak response for the March storm came to more than 50 Avista line crews, 17 contract crews and 16 vegetation management crews. Contract crews came from the Boise area and Umatilla, Ore.

But that only makes up a portion of the picture. 

“We had hundreds of folks that were not in the field that were supporting, from coordinating lodging for these crews to getting materials from one area to another depending on where the damage was to providing meals,” Good said. “That’s a 24/7 effort.” 

Scott Dahl is a lineman with International Line Builders and said storm repairs often throw up complicating factors to restoring power. 

“The No. 1 thing for me is safety,” Dahl said. “We have to make sure our crew are all safe assessing the situation and coming up with a plan as a crew for getting the lights back on.” 

Ensuring there aren’t hazards and the team is working smart to work safely at speed is an art. 

Difficulties like restoring structures that carry transmission lines take time, but methodical, safe work is faster at the end of the day.  

“It's what we do,” Dahl said.  

A journeyman lineman by trade, Dave Garegnani now also represents the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) as its business representative for union coverage in Idaho, Washington and Montana.  

“It’s odd. You usually work in a certain area where you know the specs,” Garegnani said.   

Being dropped into a new area to get to turn on the light sometimes means a “bird dog” or local guide will show them where to go and assist with a contract crew as another set of boots on the ground to support efforts. 

Vowels noted the electrical linemen that help, service and step up after major weather events are part of what makes the industry what it is. 

“It is a brotherhood, they enjoy helping each other,” Vowels said. 

Avista provides energy services, electricity to 422,000 customers and natural gas to 383,000 customers in eastern Washington, North Idaho and parts of southern and eastern Oregon. 

With a 24-hour command, each Avista service district has a manager who runs it, as well as a backup. They coordinate efforts through overlapping 16-hour shifts.   

Similarly, the line crews of three to four people are doing the same things, working 16 hours on and 8 hours off. 

Start and stop times are staggered for a 24-hour operation.    

“Crews also have the ability to at any time of a crew feeling fatigued or if anything happens to take a break,” Good said. “These are all professionals and we have multiple meetings throughout the day checking in.”   

Good noted that the first 36 hours after storm damage are the most critical. 

“Especially in those first hours of the storm, we’re really assessing what damage has taken place. In these last two storms, we’ve had significant winds so we had a lot of trees downed on public roads,” Good said. 

To even begin assessing the damaged infrastructure, Good said tree crews had to cut into the areas to start power restoration.  

The March storm also posed additional weather complications. 

“We had the wind come through and then about 20 hours later, we had a significant snowstorm up in the Kellogg area up towards Mullan. We got almost 2 feet of snow. We also received damage due to the snow because there were trees weakened by the wind,” Good said.  

He said that it sometimes makes plugging the holes in the power outage map doubly harder when the weather slows recovery times. 

“It just makes the restoration that much harder,” Good said. “We had a plan and then that snow rolled through and it caused a bit of a stall in our restoration efforts because we got more outages coming in.” 

    Rapid snowfall slowed repairs, especially in Shoshone County, for line crews after the March 12 windstorm, Avista Utilities reports.