Additional crews from Washington and Idaho supporting efforts

Spokane Wash. - March 19, 2019: Avista continues its efforts to restore natural gas service to its natural gas customers in Ashland, Ore. Early estimates indicated approximately 2,300 customers were affected. After additional assessment, the number of affected customers is now approximately 4,500.

Since the outage began, Avista has added approximately 18 natural gas service personnel from Washington and Idaho to the seven natural gas personnel that regularly provide service to Ashland customers to assist in the restoration effort.

Avista's restoration approach begins with restoring natural gas service to critical infrastructure, then moves to densely populated areas and expands outward from there to its customers.

Crews continue the process to safely shut off the natural gas meters in the affected areas and expect to begin the relight process this evening. Customers can expect crews to perform relighting until 11 p.m. Crews will resume the following morning at 8 a.m. Additionally, customers can expect the following:

  • Service personnel moving from property to property shutting off the natural gas meter.
  • Once the natural gas meters in the area have been shut off, service personnel will move from property to property to initiate the relight process.
  • The relight process involves a service person knocking on a door and entering the property when the resident is home. All Avista personnel will have identification.
  • Once relit, the service person will check the appliances in the residence.
  • If the resident is not home, the service person will leave a card on the door, inviting the customer to call Avista so we can come back to relight.
  • Customers do not need to take any action with their appliances at this time and should not relight their natural gas service on their own.

Crews will work as quickly and as safely as possible until all customers are restored. We anticipate complete restoration within 2-3 days.

As previously noted, the outage stems from a decrease in pressure in the natural gas pipeline. We understand that this is an inconvenience and appreciate the patience of our customers.

As more information is available and the restoration process progresses, we will provide additional updates. If customers currently have natural gas service, it is expected that this incident should no longer impact them.

The safety of our customers, communities and employees is our primary goal. Natural gas safety information can be found at https://www.myavista.com/safety.

About Avista Utilities
Avista Utilities is involved in the production, transmission and distribution of energy. We provide energy services and electricity to 388,000 customers and natural gas to 355,000 customers in a service territory that covers 30,000 square miles in eastern Washington, northern Idaho and parts of southern and eastern Oregon, with a population of 1.6 million. Avista Utilities is an operating division of Avista Corp. (NYSE: AVA). For more information, please visit www.myavista.com

The Avista logo is a trademark of Avista Corporation.

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Avista Corporation published this content on 19 March 2019 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 20 March 2019 00:59:05 UTC