An estimated 1,308 power customers in communities east of the Salton Sea were without power for a second day Friday as crews worked to repair wind-damaged infrastructure in the region.
Gusty winds toppled 14 power poles near Bombay Beach in Imperial County about 4:20 a.m. Thursday, leaving about 3,400 Coachella Valley customers without power in and around Mecca, according to the Imperial Irrigation District.
While crews were able to restore power to more than half of the households by early afternoon, IID officials said crews may need until Saturday to complete the job.
“It’s all hands on deck,” said Marilyn Del Bosque Gilbert, the utility’s energy manager. “We have all resources available out there now and we will continue to work as long as needed to restore power. We appreciate the patience of our customers during this unexpected outage.”
Most of the remaining 1,308 customers had power restored temporarily Thursday night through Friday morning, although IID said it delivered generators to about 20 customers in remote pockets of the region whose power could not be restored.
At 6 a.m. Friday, power shut off again for those 1,308 customers while crews continued working to fix the affected power lines. The same process could extend again through Friday night and into Saturday for an unspecified amount of customers, with work slated to be wrapped up by sometime Saturday, Schettler said.
He said crews will be working 24 hours a day to fully restore power to the region.
Schettler said some residents were congregating at area community centers while the work was completed.
