Several towns lose power during fire

by Scott Hunter

The towns of Wilbur and Creston, and every place in between, lost electric power service for a dozen hours Saturday night.

A wildfire six miles west of Spokane, near Coulee-Hite Road, reportedly affected BPA electrical towers on the Grand Coulee-Bell transmission corridor.

Driving across the plains from Spokane was eerie, with no lights on at farms or at the rest area on SR-2 at just after 9 p.m. Creston and Wilbur were also dark, with only vehicle lights and solar-powered garden pathway lights providing any illumination.

According to Inland Power and Light’s Outage Center’s website, much of the company’s service area, from Almira to as far away as LaCrosse and Newman Lake, was affected.

The website indicated an outage that was first recorded in Davenport at 9:01 p.m. and spread out from there. Lights were out at 22 points on Inland’s service area map.