power outage

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.

Good morning skiers and riders, and if you are visiting, welcome to Lake Tahoe!

Today is January 12.

A WINTER STORM WARNING CONTINUES TODAY THRU 10:00PM THIS EVENING… GOOD NEWS IS THERE’S MORE SNOW FALLING AND WINDS HAVE DIED DOWN…

MOST RESORTS ARE DIGGING OUT AND PLANNING TO HAVE SOME LIFTS TURNING… EXPECT DELAYS AND LOWER MOUNTAIN LIFTS TO OPEN FIRST AND UPPER MOUNTAIN LIFTS AFTER SNOW SAFETY. CALL AHEAD…

STAY ON DESIGNATED OPEN RUNS ONLY AND BE SAFE. STAY OUT OF THE BACK COUNTRY TODAY…

10:00 a.m. update 1/9/17: The City of South Lake Tahoe and the American Red Cross have closed their evacuation center in the city. One person arrived at the evacuation center last night.

"LTUSD and the Red Cross were excellent partners during last night’s storm event," said Tracy Franklin of the City of South Lake Tahoe.

The SLT Public Works department will be focusing on snow removal today. They are also working on getting the deep slushy water out of roadways. Franklin said the flood areas are still flooded and not receding at this point.

If the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast is correct, South Lake Tahoe could see the largest rain/snow weather event since the memorable floods of 1997 and 2005.

Those traveling to South Lake Tahoe, and those that live here, are being warned to be prepared for the storm which is slated to reach the Sierra overnight Saturday and last until Monday.

2:15 p.m. update - All power has been restored to Liberty Utility customers in Lake Tahoe.

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9:30 a.m. update - About 394 Liberty Utility customers are still affected by the power outage on Grizzly Mtn Drive, Arapahoe Street, Kickapoo, Snowflake, South Upper Truckee Drive, Reindeer Way, Woodchuck Court, St. Nick Way, Santa Claus in Christmas Valley. They expect to have all back on line by 11:30 a.m. today.

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Update: Power lines back up and electricity was restored at 2:48 p.m. for the North Lake Tahoe customers affected by Wednesdays outage.

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Approximately 123 Liberty Utilities customers in the North Lake Tahoe area are experiencing an outage due to downed power line across Hwy 89 near Cabin Creek Road.

At this time there is no estimated time of restored power.

At 8:23 a.m. Tuesday morning, 2,000 customers of Liberty Utilities in the Al Tahoe area of South Lake Tahoe lost power due to a circuit issue. Trouble shooting crews went out to investigate, rebooted the system and all power was restored by 9:17 a.m.

Some El Dorado County Court cases were postponed, but court resumed as soon as power was restored and the rest of the court day was uneventful. Neighboring buildings experienced much of the same.

This outage serves as a reminder that all residents can use from their smart phones if they have no power, or from their home computers.

Two different incidents on the South Shore Sunday night left 3,510 customers without power for about 45 minutes.

At 9:35 p.m., the California Highway Patrol responded to a collision near the intersection of Pioneer Trail and Golden Bear Trail. A 39-year-old South Lake Tahoe resident lost control of his pick-up truck on snow and ice as he headed around a curved in the southbound lane on Pioneer. He veered into a utility pole causing damage to the truck and breaking the pole, but there were no injuries to the driver or his passenger.

A fallen tree in the middle of the forest early Friday morning led to 3,500 Liberty Utilities customers being without power for several hours.

At 1:50 a.m. it was reported that power was cut off to the homes. Crews had to snowshoe into the forest to find out what the problem was, which turned out to be a tree fallen on a power line. They were able to bypass the system and get power up to about 3,100 customers by 9 a.m.

Update: Power was been restored to the 35 businesses affected by Friday's power outage in the Bijou area at 3:25 p.m.

Liberty Utilities had originally said power would be back up at 5 p.m.

The cause has not been released as of yet but it had to do with underground wiring.

Liberty Utilities has cancelled the planned power outage scheduled for parts of Alpine County due to the current Washington Fire in the Markleeville area.

The outage was scheduled for June 24th and July 1st to allow Liberty crews to replace some power poles in the area.

Liberty will notify its customers when this necessary maintenance will occur once new
dates have been scheduled.

A strong storm advancing through the Lake Tahoe area is causing isolated outages for some of Nevada Energy and Liberty Utilities’ customers. With winds at 35-50 mph and much stronger gusts over the ridges, utility officials would like to remind customers of the following safety measures.

- Always treat low hanging and downed power lines as if they were energized.
- Call 911 or notify Liberty Utilities’ toll-free emergency number at 1-844-245-6868 if you see downed power lines or damaged electrical equipment.

High winds kept emergency personnel busy throughout the day on Thursday. Downed power lines and trees wrecked havoc on the South Shore where many residents were without power for much of the day and evening.

A 200 ft tall tree fell at St. Theresa's Catholic Church just before noon. A photo of the tree barely missing the statue of St. Theresa in front of the church made it to the national news via Associated Press according to Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District Marshall Eric Guevin. Most of the damage was to the tree.

Liberty Utilities is reminding customers to always be prepared for winter storms and possible power outages that may result from them.

“Although we’ve made significant progress in reducing electrical outages since acquiring the utility nearly four years ago, the reality is that a really big winter storm can impact our ability to keep the lights on,” according to Mike Smart, President of Liberty Utilities-California.

With the approaching winter storm, Liberty offers the following outage preparation tips:

A truck carrying tresses to a new building adjacent to the Beach Retreat & Lodge in South Lake Tahoe hit a power pole, causing a transformer to blow, a small fire and power outages to schools, businesses and homes.

The driver of the truck was lost according to South Tahoe Police, and cut through the Safeway parking lot to try and get to the building through the hotel across the street. As he came out of Safeway onto Johnson Blvd, the truck hit a pole and power lines.

As they were preparing to power up the hotel and casino during Sunday's power outage, MontBleu's generator had a malfunction, sending smoke billowing out of the resort.

Tahoe Douglas Fire Department responded. "We responded to a generator malfunction," said Eric Guevin, Tahoe Douglas Fire Marshall. "The generator unit was producing a substantial amount of smoke and we had to shut it down."

MontBleu got another generator up and running and emergency power was sent to the casino and hotel.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - As the Superdome's energy provider and stadium management try to determine what caused a 34-minute power outage at Sunday's Super Bowl, local officials are hoping the incident...

Troopers from the Nevada Highway Patrol issued nearly 12,000 traffic citations to motorists observed talking, texting or reading non-voice communication while operating a motor vehicle on Nevada’s highways in 2012. Thirty of the offenders last year received their second citation for the same offense with 25 of those witnessed on their phone for a third time and cited once more.

A South Lake Tahoe man died and two were hospitalized in an early Saturday morning accident near Pioneer Trail and Ski Run Boulevard.
William Olazaba of South Lake Tahoe, a passenger in a white Honda Accord driven by Roberto Olazaba, 22, died at Barton Memorial Hospital. According to South Lake Tahoe police, the Honda broadsided a GMC Yukon driven by Noe Corea, 26, of South Lake Tahoe.
The accident was reported at around 1:35 a.m. and alcohol is suspected as being a contributing factor, according to South Lake Tahoe police. The vehicles struck a power utility box and knocked out power to the Ski Run area, police said.

UPDATE 9PM: A power outage that affected NV Energy customers in Round Hill, Zephyr Cove and Glenbrook has been restored, according to the power company. Electricity was restored at around 8:40 tonight after reportedly going down at around 5:45 p.m. The preliminary cause of the outage was a bad piece of equipment in a substation, said NV Energy spokesman Karl Walquist.