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Power Restored To ID's Duck Valley After Fire Damage

By John Miller

BOISE, Idaho -- Two big generators finally helped restore electricity to all 1,300 residents of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation on Thursday, ending nearly eight days in which this community of Shoshone and Paiute Indians on the Idaho-Nevada border was without power due to wildfires that torched transmission lines and power poles.

The community was affected by the Murphy Complex fire burning in grass, sagebrush and pine trees.

The generators had to be trucked from Denver and Las Vegas, Nev., by the Raft River Rural Electric Cooperative and were connected to Duck Valley's electricity network Wednesday evening. But it took another 12 hours before power reached everyone on the 450-square-mile reservation, Shoshone-Paiute Chairman Kyle Prior told The Associated Press.

"We're still telling people to conserve, and not to run things that people don't absolutely need," Prior said Thursday.

While some buildings, including the tribal headquarters and 1970s-era hospital, had emergency power during the outage from stand-alone diesel generators, the hospital couldn't run its air conditioner amid temperatures approaching 100 degrees, Prior said. Click here to read the full story.