Peninsula continues to battle power outages during cold snap

"Then it went out and stayed out," Chumley said.

Chumley, her husband and two children used a generator to power a space heater they moved from room to room in the well-insulated home. Still, the temperature dipped to 52 degrees inside, Chumley said.

"Not real cozy," she said. "I wore a hat to bed."

Their power didn't come back on until Thursday, but the Chumleys might now be considered lucky. For some, the outages are expected to continue into the weekend, with low temperatures from 0 to 10 degrees in the forecast.

Of the roughly 13,000 Homer Electric Association customers whose power was affected this week -- in Nikiski, Kenai, Soldotna, Kasilof, Sterling and the Funny River area among others -- about 800 homes and businesses remained without power late Thursday. Electricity for the remaining customers would likely be out into Saturday and Sunday, according to the utility's spokesman, Joe Gallagher.

"The damage is more extreme and more severe that what we anticipated," Gallagher said. "It's a mess."

It's the second widespread, prolonged outage on the Peninsula since the beginning of November. Crews were still working earlier this week to replace temporary fixes following the first storm with more permanent ones when the second storm hit with winds of at least 60 mph and reported up to 70 mph, Gallagher said.

"Normally, maybe once a winter we'll see a big windstorm packing the punch that these two had," he said. And sometimes we'll go several winters before we see a wind as intense as this."

The overnight low Thursday was forecast at 15 below to 10 above for the Peninsula, according to the National Weather Service.

Despite their hopes to have power restored by Friday night to all of their customers, Gallagher said linemen found more downed lines and power poles Thursday than they initially suspected.

The cost of repairing the lines was already pegged at about $1.2 million, but with more reports of scattered outages coming in Thursday -- and winds picking up again -- the damage estimate could still rise, Gallagher said.

"We threw everything we had at it, plus additional linemen from outside the company," Gallagher said.

The utility has contracted 28 extra linemen from private companies to work alongside their normal staff of about 17, Gallagher said. That's allowing for round-the-clock shifts to get power restored as quickly as possible, he said.

The work included standing power polls back up, replacing poles that were destroyed, and re-stringing line, Gallagher said.

A crew rode by boat about 11 p.m. Wednesday across Kachemak Bay to Seldovia to connect a backup generator there to homes along Jakolof Bay Road, Gallagher said.

Another priority for the crews: Kenai and Nikiski schools, which canceled classes Wednesday due to the outages. The schools reopened Thursday, according to the Kenai Peninsula Borough.

Local plumbing companies were working nonstop to deal with burst pipes, frozen in houses without heat, said Eric Mohrmann, director of the borough's emergency management office. At least one house had been hit by a falling tree, and firefighters worked overnight shifts looking for downed power lines, Mohrmann said.

The borough opened a shelter Wednesday night, and a lone man without power or heat at home had to leave his pets to stay there, Mohrmann said.

"That's always a hard decision for anybody to have to do that, but I'm glad he did make that decision," Mohrmann said.

Whether it was "one person or a hundred" that needed help, the borough and Red Cross wanted to be prepared with the shelter, which was manned by volunteers, Mohrmann said.

"It goes to show that people are pretty self-reliant," he said. "But after two days or three days without heat or any water, people may be getting more desperate and they may be looking for shelter."

While the shelter was closed Thursday, Mohrmann said it could be opened again quickly if needed.

For the most part, customers have been understanding and appreciative of the hard work, Gallagher said. Some even brought in homemade pies for the crews, he said.

A small number of others suffering through prolonged outages have not been so understanding, Gallagher said. Much of the frustration is related to customers hearing that power has been restored in some areas, but not theirs, he said.

"There's no way everybody's going to come back online at the same time," Gallagher said.

For Chumley, whose power was out for two days, the outage was a reminder of modern conveniences, she said.

"It makes you realize how fortunate we are to have electricity and how accustomed we've become to it, and just how long it takes to do things without it," she said. "The simple act of making a cup of tea is a lot larger when you can't just flip on the stove and put the tea kettle on."

Still, when the power returned Thursday, Chumley was glad when she saw the light from a lamp she'd left on.

"It just came on, and suddenly you could hear the heat, and it was like, 'Sounds. Yay. Good sounds.' "

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Reach Casey Grove at casey.grove@adn.com or 257-4589.