Avista Says Workers Completing up to 900 Natural Gas 'Relights' per Hour - bigcountrynewsconnection.com

Avista Says Workers Completing up to 900 Natural Gas 'Relights' per Hour | Idaho | bigcountrynewsconnection.com

LEWISTON - On Friday, Avista customers throughout the Palouse and Lewiston-Clarkston Valley region began to have their natural gas services fully restored.

Avista developed restoration maps, released Friday, for each region that include zones that indicate the order of restoration, and a window of time teams are expected to be in each zone. Those maps can found below. Avista estimates a time-frame of one to two days per zone to complete the relight process.

The company says relight sequencing times are based on geographic location of the infrastructure and critical customers. Additional information about the estimated restoration times identified by area can be accessed, by visiting https://www.myavista.com/outages/wp-updates.

Avista says the number of total relights throughout the region has peaked at 900 relights per hour.

According to Avista on Saturday evening, over 300 mutual aid partners from across the western United States and currently over 25 private and local HVAC contractors have been onboarded and deployed to help with the restoration efforts. Including Avista personnel, over 800 individuals are responding to restoration services.

At this point, Avista is still expecting to have natural gas services fully restored by the

end of day Tuesday.

On Wednesday, November 8, an estimated 37,000 customers experienced natural gas outages stemming from the damage that occurred on the Williams Pipeline between the cities of Pullman and Colfax.

Avista says the company will continue to work through the weekend and into next week to relight natural gas appliances between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Customers will receive notification within 24 hours of their planned relight that crews are headed to their zone.

The relight process involves a service person knocking on a door and entering the property when a resident or business owner is present. An adult will need to be present to let the service person inside. Customers are asked not to leave doors to homes unlocked. All field personnel conducting relights will have identification.

Once relit, Avista will check the appliances in the residence. If the resident is not home, Avista will leave a card on the door upon the last attempt for the day, inviting the customer to call Avista so someone can come back to relight.

Customers do not need to schedule their own relights. There is no cost to customers for relights or gas restoration activity.

In rare situations, Avista may find appliance repairs that are needed before proceeding with a relight. In these circumstances, customers may need to work with a licensed dealer to complete the repair. Avista can return to do a safety check.