Salt Lake City spring storm update: 3/30/19, 5:00 p.m.

SALT LAKE CITY — While good progress was made Saturday on restoring power outage caused by Friday’s snowstorm, the sheer number of damage conditions that affect small groups or single customers indicates that the restoration work will continue into Sunday.

Repair crews from Rocky Mountain Power’s central Utah and Idaho service centers provided relief for Salt Lake Valley crews. All told, more than 200 employees were engaged in restoration, working coordinated rotating shifts of 16 hours on, then 8 hours rest.

As of 5 p.m. Saturday, about 2500 customers were out of service in the Salt Lake Valley, from 113 reported problems.

A significant number of the trouble spots affected individual customers. With each repair taking 60 minutes to several hours, depending on degree of damage, the restoration work at this stage is very labor-intensive. The first priority of repair crews is safety for those performing the work and the public. The company is also very aware of how much our customers depend on their electric service.

Rocky Mountain Power thanks customers in advance for their patience as we work to restore power. The company understands how difficult it can be for customers during extended storm outages. Crews make every effort to keep outage durations to a minimum and to restore power safely and quickly.

Because of the nature of the damage from this snowstorm, a number of overhead service lines to homes may be damaged. The company will repair these connections, but customers should be aware that meter bases and masts are customer equipment. If these are damaged by a falling tree limb, the customer must contact a qualified electrician for repair before the service line can be re-connected. A diagram and more information is available here: https://www.rockymountainpower.net/ed/po/or/wwetrp.html