Crews work to get power back after Great Salt Lake wildfires

SALT LAKE CITY – High winds yesterday afternoon whipped up two fires on the shore of the Great Salt Lake at Lakepoint along State Route 201 and Interstate 80.

Those fires were still flaring up through the night and causing road closures, as firefighters worked to suppress the flames.

This morning, the flames were gone. But, the fires were still putting out a lot of smoke. The fires also did a lot of damage to the Rocky Mountain Power system in that area.

“Wind and weather have the greatest impact on our system,” Tiffany Erickson said, a spokesperson with Rocky Mountain Power.

Last night, wind-driven wildfires torched 20 of their power pole structures along SR 201, cutting power to businesses and industrial customers because the polls were in a critical location.

“It was coming out of one of our larger substations. So, it did impact 42 non-residential customers,” Erickson said.

Power crews have been trying to get those customers back online since last night.

“We were able to connect a generator for about 25 non-residential customers,” Erickson said. “So they’re running on that, and we were able to restore those.”

Big diesel generators, like one, are now powering the facilities at the Salt Lake Marina.

But, the wind was so powerful that it prevented Rocky Mountain Power linemen from getting up to fix the problems until later in the afternoon when they were able to start putting in new poles.

“They are prioritizing building those and bringing those 17 non-residential customers back onto the system. They’re looking at Monday night Erickson said.

Rocky Mountain Power is closely watching their entire system statewide as the high winds persist.

“We’re monitoring outages. We’re closely monitoring for wildfire risk. And making sure that our cruise can safely rebuild some of that infrastructure,” Erickson insisted.

The winds are impacting power along the Wasatch Front for their system. They’ve had as many as 6900 customers out of power. Tonight, they are reminding all of us to be prepared for outages and have a plan for what to do if we lose our power.