The Imperial Irrigation District (IID) has brought back electric power service to all its customers in Salton City, Imperial County, California, after a severe windstorm upended close to 78 transmission poles and related distribution infrastructure in the Desert Shores, Salton Sea Beach and Salton City localities on Feb. 21, 2023. Close to 1,200 IID energy customers were impacted by the outage.
In response to the outage, IID first serviced its customers with a 2-MW generator, though the utility was unable to service a handful of customers in the Salton City area via this interim solution. District crews in coordination with Burbank Water and Power, Edison Power Constructors and Irby Construction have worked 24/7 since the outage and have now been able to restore complete electric power services as of the evening of Feb. 28, 2023.
The IID Board of Directors and the Imperial County Board of Supervisors had declared an emergency and the resolution requires the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to reimburse the county with funds. Line construction crews are still busy in the Salton Sea area. The work will be called off as repairs are completed in the northern section. IID is still gauging the magnitude of the damage.
IID Energy Manager Jamie Asbury said, “IID extends its deepest appreciation to all its customers for their assistance and patience as we worked to restore power. We want to especially thank the dedicated crews who have given it their all, along with the people and entities, such as the many agencies representing the County of Imperial, the Red Cross, and CalOES, as these responders were key in meeting customer needs.”
