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SALT LAKE CITY — Thousands of people throughout Utah lost power Friday evening due to several different incidents that created a "perfect storm," said Rocky Mountain Power officials.
At one point, 61 outages statewide affected nearly 20,000 customers, the company said. By 9 p.m., most of the residents' power had been restored.
The locations, causes and numbers for the outages included:
- A vehicle crash in North Ogden left about 1,300 people without power.
- A damaged line in the Moroni, Sanpete County, area affected about 1,300 people.
- In Tooele County, about 1,900 people lost power. The cause is still under investigation.
- The Spanish Fork and Mapleton area had about 11,000 people without power. Mapleton city officials reported it was caused by a fire at the Rocky Mountain substation at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon.
"Please be mindful of your water use, as our city's well system is power-operated," Mapleton officials said.
After the line was repaired, the number of people experiencing power outages decreased to about 6,800 in that area by 7:30 p.m., said Rocky Mountain Power spokesman Jona Whitesides.
- Two outages in Iron County, in the Enoch area, affected 1,800 people. Its cause also isn't known.
"Being a Friday afternoon, we have ... crews on call, so they're limited to what they do as we send out what's called a troubleshooter, and they assess the situation. If they can fix it themselves, they will, and otherwise they have to call another crew. It's the nature of going into the weekend," Whitesides said.
He described many of the outages happening within an hour of each other as a "coincidence" and said they're unrelated to each other.
He said the repairs would likely take longer than usual due to reduced staffing for the weekend.
"The best thing to do is continue to check the outage map and then, if they (residents) have any real concerns, they can also call customer service, and customer service can always give them updates as well. Because we staff our customer service 24/7," Whitesides said.
Rocky Mountain Power's outages map can be found at rockymountainpower.net/outages-safety.html.
