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A mix of clouds and sun. High 82F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..
Clear skies. Low 49F. Winds light and variable.
A recent photo of Avista linemen on a project near Grangeville.
A recent photo of Avista linemen on a project near Grangeville.
Providing power through North Central Idaho’s rugged and remote country is a challenge under normal circumstances, and it is made more difficult during wildfire season when many rural communities hold their collective breath at this time with each thunderstorm and red flag warning. While operational precautions during this season are nothing new, Avista Utilities has implemented new strategies, as well as millions of dollars into system and management processes to both mitigate and minimize risks of wildfire, as well as protect local communities and ensure service disruptions are as few and as limited as possible.
“Wildfire safety and prevention is one of Avista’s more important objectives during the summer months,” the season defined as July through the first part of October, according to David Howell, director of operations. More than 40% of Avista’s electric system is in elevated fire risk areas located through North Central Idaho, and speaking to the company’s Wildfire Resiliency Plan (WPR), they look to “mitigate the risk of being involved in wildfire and provide reliability during fire seasons when we are seeing fires in areas where we live.”
Howell was one of several speakers on a telephonic town hall meeting conducted jointly by Avista and Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) held Wednesday, Aug. 10, with its customers, elected officials and the public. This was one of several held for regions through north central and northern Idaho, and eastern Washington earlier this month, laying out summer precaution operations and implementation of more than $330 million during the next 10 years in mitigation projects to reduce the threat of wildfire.
“Grid hardening is our infrastructure investment program,” said Dave James, Avista Wildfire Resiliency manager. “We’re putting a lot of focus on infrastructure improvements, and that will take us some time.”
Within the region, work starts next month in Kooskia on replacing out some wooden poles with metal, installation of protective wire mesh at pole bases, and replacement of wooden crossarms with fiberglass.
“Fiberglass crossarms don’t lead to the phenomenon of pole fires,” he said, “and we’re just on the verge of pole fire season when we get that first wetting rain. And if you replace them, that reduces that risk.”
Avista has shifted its cycle of tree trimming — addressing dead, dying and risk trees — from every five years to now yearly, he said.
“That’s a big lift for us, every year, as there’s over 10,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines,” James said. Within the Idaho, Lewis and Clearwater counties’ area, the plan is for inspecting 486 miles of lines, of which 308 is done so far, and within this, crews have identified about 400 dead and dying trees for removal.
An Elk City resident noted his community experiences many outages due to trees going down on lines, and asked why this issue hasn’t improved in his 45 years living there.
“That is one of the longest circuits we have in the system, and that’s routed through a lot of timber,” James said, adding there’s a “continual discussion on how to make service better to Elk City. It is very challenging.” James, as well as Howell, explained Avista is putting portions of the line underground — “It would be difficult to do the entire line from Grangeville to Elk City, but we are taking this on,” James said — as well as vegetation management to remove dead, dying and risk trees that are the primary cause of outages to this community.
In operation for 20 years is Avista’s dry-land mode where approximately 40 percent of its distribution circuits are disabled to auto reenergize when a powerline fault occurs. Avista personnel physically inspect an outage area before a line is placed back in service. New this year is expanded levels of dryland mode — elevated and extreme — that increase sensitivity of the system to further reduce fire risk. With these modes comes increased outage length times to allow for physical line inspection. With this, Avista partners with area fire protection agencies, including IDL and more than 750 fire districts within its territory, according to James.
“We’re responsible for more than six million acres of state and private lands and rangelands in Idaho,” said Kevin Chaffee of Cottonwood, IDL fire warden. “IDL focuses on initial attack, and our goal is to keep all fires at 10 acres or less,” having a success rate of 95-96%, with the focus to protect and preserve timber that benefits schools through the state endowment, “as well as millions of acres of private forest land.”
A questioner posed whether Avista has looked into smart grid technology to cut down on impacting outage areas by isolating this to the actual affected regions. James noted that they do have midline reclosure devices in place, for example at the edge of Nezperce, so were an outage out of the area to occur this would not impact town residents.
“We have some circuits that are hundreds of miles long,” he said, “and we have several midline closures on them.... The placement of these devices really meshes with our fire program.”
Three questions focused on safety as related to wildfire: what to do to prepare, and how and where notifications for incidents are handled.
“When we get wildfires approaching into a town, when it gets to the point to do evacuations, that all goes through the local county sheriff’s office,” Chaffee said, later adding that IDL does provide alerts through text messaging and email that the public can sign up for at www.idl.idaho.gov. Information on wildfires is also posted online through a national fire reporting website, inciweb.org.
When conditions warrant increasing dryland mode sensitivity, James said they issue email alerts, as well as through their social media platforms — Facebook and Twitter — when those change, “and what we’re trying to do is inform people 24 to 36 hours out.”
In advance of fires, property owners in areas of wildfire risk were advised to be proactive in protecting their structures and creating defensible space to the adjacent area, utilizing guidelines through the Firewise program, details for which are available through IDL or U.S. Forest Service offices, or online at idahofirewise.org.
Adding to this, Chaffee said wildfire mitigation money is available to counties to conduct defensible space on private ground, and one such program is available through Idaho County. Property owners can contact either Jerry Zumalt or Sandi Paul at 208-983-3074.
“There are a number of ways to protect your property,” Chaffee said. “Create defensible space around your house, secure the perimeter, fireproof your roof to keep embers out, work with your neighbors to create an emergency plan and kit. The resource for this is the Firewise program, and IDL backs this 100%.”
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