Spokane7
59°
January 9, 2012 in City
Theft, technical glitch result in Avista outages
A theft of copper wire from an Avista Utilities substation early Monday morning caused a power outage for 5,800 Coeur d’Alene customers.
And Monday afternoon a brief downtown Spokane power outage left businesses and offices in the dark until technicians repaired the problem.
The North Idaho incident resulted from thieves cutting through a barbed wire fence to steal copper wire from the Huetter substation near Huetter and Prairie roads in Hayden, according to Avista.
The substation power only started to fail at breakfast time as customers turned on their appliances, said company spokesman Dan Kolbet.
Avista tried to transfer power to a second substation but technical problems caused the outage.
All affected customers regained power by 2:30 p.m. Monday afternoon. Police have not identified any suspects, Kolbet added.
Then around 12:30 p.m. Monday a section of downtown Spokane lost power after Avista technicians testing equipment at a substation inadvertently caused the outage, said spokeswoman Debbie Simock.
The technicians inside the Post Street substation fixed the problem in less than 10 minutes, she said.
Customers and workers at the River Park Square shopping mall evacuated the building during the outage. Also without power were the downtown Spokane Library building, the Spokane Club and the Federal Courthouse, Simock said.
Idaho vodka ban cocktail of bad judgment 
lowtechmaster on January 09 at 6:55 p.m.
No doubt that Avista will request, and get, a rate increase to cover their cost! It’s called “corporate greed!”
crazyivan44 on January 09 at 7:07 p.m.
Yeah…keeping the lights on and turning a profit is greed…
RedCedar on January 09 at 8:01 p.m.
Too bad remains of the thieves weren’t smoldering on the wires when the cops showed up. I’m really sick of all the tweaker scrap thieves these days, and the scrap yards that buy big coils of bright shiny wire from nervous, bony guys who look like they haven’t slept in a week. The scrap yards know damn well the punks stole the stuff.
What those thieves need is about 100 kW of Post Falls’ finest alternating current toasting their remaining 5 or 6 brain cells to a nice shade of crispy. That’s what the sparkies call “clearing the fault”.
reavis87 on January 09 at 8:21 p.m.
There is a lot of activity a mile south of Prairie on Huetter along the bike trail by Avista. Police should know to patrol the area more often due to vandalism, theft and trespassing. I’m sure they can write a few tickets for speeding too.
ditaylor on January 09 at 8:36 p.m.
probably scrappers just trying to pay their high outrageous Avista bill - blood suckers!
zelda on January 09 at 8:53 p.m.
Not to mention the fire they had in a storage shed or trailer (not clear which it was) at their HQ site on Mission and Upriver Drive. KREM has that story.
So much attention is being paid internationally to stories about cyber crimes and cyber terrorists who could bring down a utility grid with variants of the Stuxnet virus aimed at a computer controller, whereas in Spokane the threat is so banal and unexotic — meth-heads stealing power lines for money.
Metal buyers have to be turning a blind eye to where this wire is coming from. Who are they kidding? If there weren’t a market, these guys would not keep stealing it.
Ron_the_Cop on January 09 at 11:27 p.m.
Zelda,
Perhaps the should contract with me. After all I know a thing about metal thefts and recyclers:-)