Shortly after 6:00 pm on Thursday, about 7,000 Matanuska Electric Association customers from Houston north lost power. At the same time, areas of Fairbanks and North Pole also lost power.
MEA’s Director of Public Relations, Julie Estey says the outage is due to an issue with the Alaska intertie, the transmission line that runs from Anchorage to Fairbanks. She says that MEA and Municipal Light and Power are both checking the line.
There are unconfirmed reports of a lightning strike near the line in the Houston area. Estey says that it might be possible to re-energize the line if there is no damage. If there is damage, then it may be possible to back-feed from generators that are currently spinning up in Fairbanks.
