As of Sunday afternoon, Avista had restored natural gas service to an estimated 15,000 customers who experienced outages stemming from the damage that occurred on the Williams Pipeline between the cities of Pullman and Colfax.
Each of the teams is currently averaging more than 5 relights an hour, and the number of total relights per hour throughout the region is regularly reaching peaks of around 900 relights per hour.
Avista has developed restoration maps 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. Avista estimates a time frame of one to two days per zone to complete the relight process.
Over 300 mutual aid partners from across the western United States and currently around 60 private and local HVAC contractors have been onboarded and deployed to continue the restoration efforts. Including Avista personnel, over 800 individuals are responding to restoration services during this historic event. At this point, Avista is still expecting to have natural gas services fully restored to each zone by the end of the day on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Avista has received reports of scams from customers throughout the affected service territory.
The latest example involves a GoFundMe account soliciting funds allegedly aimed to “establish a fund to help Avista workers facing unexpected financial challenges.” This is not an Avista-authorized account or effort.
Unfortunately, in emergency situations like this incident, scammers will typically move quickly, looking to trick as many people as possible into complying with their demands or falling victim to their fraudulent programs.
Customers should be on alert and continue to report suspicious requests or interactions with anyone who may be impersonating the company. Additionally, customers should not grant a suspicious person or suspected scammer access to their homes.
