Power went out across Juneau shortly after 2:30 p.m. Thursday. It was restored for the majority of town by 4 p.m.
Alaska Electric Light and Power responded to the areawide outage, which began with a tree falling on a power line on Gastineau Avenue in downtown Juneau.
Several people on social media reported seeing sparks and a flash coming from power lines near the downtown waterfront.
Katie McCaffery said she saw the explosion from across Gastineau Channel in Douglas.
“It had started as, like, initially this small black plume that became this kind of billowing orange color and then went to a big blue light and eventually became this big searing white color that was almost the same size of this condominium that we’re above,” she said.
Capital City Fire/Rescue wrote on Facebook that staff responded to Gastineau Avenue where the tree had fallen on a powerline.
AEL&P wrote on social media that it had begun the restoration process for customers as of about 3 p.m. Power came back on in most parts of town before 4 p.m. But, according to AEL&P, another tree on a line near Tee Harbor would delay things for that area of town.
A similar outage on Monday morning knocked out power for several hours. That was caused by heavy ice and snow on power lines.
AEL&P also responded to an outage late Wednesday night out the road. According to the National Weather Service, wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour were expected Thursday, but were supposed to diminish throughout the day.
Rashah McChesney contributed to this report.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly said winds were light throughout the Juneau area at the time of Thursday’s outage.
