Helicopters used to survey power line situation in Lake Tahoe

Liberty Utilities is continuing their restoration efforts throughout the north, west and south shores of Lake Tahoe. On Friday, helicopters helped Liberty Utilities take a look at previously inaccessible areas to survey damage to downed power poles and lines.

A helicopter is coming in from Southern California on Saturday and will drop crews and equipment into remote areas to begin restoration that is expected to take several days. Snow cats and snowmobiles will be used to get crews and equipment into Tahoe Pines tomorrow, and this is also expected to take several days.

Residents in the River Road and Tahoe Pines area on the North Shore should prepare for multiple day outages according to Kathy Carter, spokesperson for Liberty Utilities.

"We will attempt to call customers in those areas to inform them of our progress as crews gain access to where the most severe damage to our structures occurred," said Carter.

South Lake Tahoe customers may experience sporadic, short-term outages as crews re-energize lines.

There are still about 200 200 customers without power around the South Shore with estimated restoration within 24 - 48 hours to the majority of them. West and North Shore has approximately 4,000 customers without power, mostly between Emerald Bay and Tahoe City due to a major power line that has been down for several days and has been inaccessible due to extreme avalanche danger.