[UPDATE: Approximately 222 Rocky Mountain Power customers in West Valley City are without power as of 5 a.m. Thursday morning.]
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah -- Residents of West Valley City spent their Wednesday waiting for the lights to come back on. It was one of the areas hit hard by down power lines.
According to Rocky Mountain Power, as of Wednesday afternoon more than 800 West Valley City residents were without power after a utility pole caught fire around 3:45 a.m. By 9 p.m., the number of those without power climbed to more than 2,000 after a vehicle ran into a utility pole.
“My wife has been home all day and she hasn’t been able to do ironing or laundry or things that she would normally do,” said resident Charles Little.
Little has tried his best to cope without electricity.
“Here is our little bag of dry ice hopefully keeping our refrigerator a little bit cooler,” said Little as he walked FOX 13 News through his Rawhide Drive home.
Little is especially worried about the seniors in this neighborhood.
“Our neighbors, they are a little bit elderly, a little older and they had to come out and sit in their car to get warm because their car is in the sun and the inside of their car is warm,” Little said.
Across the street, it’s the opposite extreme, as mothers dealt with rambunctious 2-year-old children.
“With him sleeping we have the fan, I put him down for the nap, and he said, ‘put the fan on’, and I said, ‘I can’t the power is not on,”’ said Hannah Lammers, regarding her son Dax.
Lammers said putting Dax to sleep has been a challenge.
“Mostly the temperature, if it gets cold at night, he doesn’t have much of a blanket because he won’t keep it on,” she said.
A few houses down, Vanessa Thompson and son Sylus attempted to tackle bath time.
“Bath time will be changed because it will be by nightlight or candle light if we can find some candles which will be pretty traumatic for my son being how young he is,” Thompson said. “Normally he has a full lit bathroom in order to bathe.”
Thompson is also worried she will have to throw away everything in her refrigerator, which she said would amount to a $400 loss.
Rocky Mountain Power said they are working as quickly as possible to restore all the outages. They even called in back-up crews from Wyoming to help out.
