Crews still working to restore power after another windstorm slams Interior

Golden Valley Electric Association crews have been hard at work since early this morning repairing power lines downed by falling trees knocked over by the windstorm that slammed into the Interior Sunday.
Winds in excess of 70 miles an hour ripped through the Interior again Sunday, the second such windstorm in 10 days.
GVEA spokeswoman Cassandra Cerny says the utility has seven crews working to restore power to as many as a thousand homes around the Interior.
“Delta Junction, Nenana, North Pole, Salcha, and then northern Fairbanks, so Chena Hot Springs Road, Gold Mine Trail, the were the most heavily hit,” she said.
Cerny said at 9 this morning that GVEA officials didn’t yet have an exact number on how many homes were without power, and when electricity would be restored.
“We’re estimating about 500 to a thousand members were out of power,” she said. “But again, some people may not have called in yet. So we just don’t know.”
The situation was as bad, if not worse around Tok. Alaska Power and Telephone spokesman Mark McCready spokesman says reports from the AP&T workers in the area report that the storm caused widespread damage to the utility’s system and nearby communities
“Half the town  of Tok is out of power,” he said. “They said Tanacross was horrifically damaged, as far as people’s homes, and cars (were) turned over. They said Tanacross seemed to almost be some kind of epicenter of some kind of – I don’t know if it was some kind of micro-tornado, or what. They said we had poles torn out of the ground and thrown 20 feet in spots.”
McCready says AP&T is calling in crews from around the state. He doesn’t expect repairs to be completed for at least two weeks.