Power outage to affect Pullman campus

Utility company plans power outage to repair this morning’s equipment failures

KAYE GILL, Evergreen reporter

Avista Utilities planned a power outage that will affect the Pullman campus from 5 – 5:30 p.m.

“Avista crews will be repairing the equipment impacted by the earlier failure, which will result in an additional disruption in service,” said David Vowels, communications manager at Avista Corp.

Vowels said approximately 3,700 of their customers experienced a disruption in service at around 11:00 a.m.

He said that Avista was able to restore power in about twenty minutes.

An alert announcing a campus-wide power outage was issued by the WSU Alert system at 11:32 a.m.

“The outage was equipment failure on the service that serves that area,” Vowels said.

Sarah Blatner, WSU Emergency Management Coordinator said the outage most affected the eastern part of the campus and there might have been other areas of Pullman that suffered an outage as well.

“It happens from time to time,” Blatner said. “Sometimes it [can be] people running into power poles, sometimes it’s an animal… it kind of varies when it happens.”

At 1:40 p.m., a final update was issued stating that all buildings had power restored, according to the WSU Alert website. At 11:56 a.m. all buildings had power except for Beasley Coliseum.

At 11:49 a.m., Elson S. Floyd Cultural Center, the Student Recreation Center, Chinook and Cougar Health Services had been restored, according to the WSU Alert website.

An initial alert at 11:38 a.m. said all dining centers on campus, as well as the CUB and Chinook, were open and had power, according to the WSU Alert website.