Adds latest outages
By Scott DiSavino
NEW YORK, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Over 585,000 homes and businesses were still without power on Wednesday as severe storms battered the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
That was down from around 661,000 customers out earlier in the day as utilities in some states restored service. In total, the storm affected about 795,000 customers.
The hardest-hit utilities included Puget Sound Energy in Washington State with around 126,000 of its roughly 1.29 million customers out and Portland General Electric POR.N in Oregon with around 80,000 of its roughly 445,700 customers out, according to PowerOutage.us.
On its website, Puget Sound Energy said early morning reports from field crews are of a significant amount of damage, including wires down and uprooted trees. "We currently have 18 substations and 31 transmission lines offline," the utility said.
"Weather conditions are expected to improve today ... We've brought in additional crews from outside our region and are working around the clock to restore service as quickly and safely as possible," Puget Sound Energy said.
Here are the major outages by state:
State
Outages
Washington
255,200
Oregon
135,100
Idaho
59,700
Montana
71,300
Colorado
50,600
California
13,900
Total Out
585,800
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino
Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Aurora Ellis)
((scott.disavino@thomsonreuters.com; +1 332 219 1922; Reuters Messaging: scott.disavino.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net/))