Power was restored Tuesday to nearly 300 Imperial Irrigation District customers in the North Shore area, near the Salton Sea, but more than 660 other customers could be without power up to four days.
According to IID, a storm on Monday destroyed approximately 33 electrical poles and knocked out power in the area for more than 950 customers.
The utility reported that damage assessment and restoration work was underway, with 292 customers having had their power restored as of 10:22 a.m. Tuesday, but based on the most up-to-date information, full power restoration was expected to take up to four days.
IID was making ice and bottled water available for North Shore customers affected by the outage. The supplies were being provided at the IID command center located near the intersection of Club View Drive and Vander Veer Road in North Shore. Ice will be provided from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the remainder of the outage.
County Supervisor Manuel Perez, whose Fourth District encompasses Thousand Palms, responded to the announcement on Twitter by saying, “4 days is too long. My office is reaching out to county departments to see what resources we can help IID with.”
IID serves electricity to more than 150,000 customers in parts of Riverside and San Diego counties, and all of Imperial County.