MOUNTAIN HOME, Idaho — Mountain Home residents say repeated power outages have become a recurring problem in recent weeks, disrupting daily routines, damaging appliances and raising safety concerns as temperatures climb above 100 degrees.
Neighbor Nocona Bass said the outages have happened three times in two weeks.
"You don't know when the lights are going to come back on. I might be late for work, you know, if my phone dies. That's my only alarm," Bass said.
WATCH: What's behind Mountain Home's recent power outages?
Bass said a recent outage on Thursday lasted four hours, forcing her to cook dinner on camping equipment. She said at least one neighbor suffered permanent appliance damage.
"One of my friends' washing machine no longer works because of it," Bass said. "They had to buy a whole new one."
Neighbor Autumn Osborne said she left work during a recent outage to check on her pets in the heat.
"It's going to be 105 and the power goes out. Dog dies. I'm gonna be really upset at Idaho Power," Osborne said.
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Idaho Power said Thursday's outage was caused by storms moving through the area. Because wildfire conditions were elevated, the company said its systems were set to respond more aggressively.
"We had winds, lightning, as you know, it's pretty dry out there. So we put an enhanced setting in these devices to where it'll trip off quicker," said Bo Hanchey, Idaho Power's VP of Customer Operations and Chief Safety Officer.
Hanchey said the company does not want customers to experience outages and works to avoid causing them, but some circumstances are beyond its control.
“We're doing everything we can to make sure that it's minimal, but first and foremost we are doing what we can to protect the system, protect where they live,” Hanchey said.
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Idaho Power said Mountain Home traditionally does not experience an unusual number of outages compared to other Treasure Valley communities.
Residents said they understand some outages may be unavoidable, but with extreme heat, they worry losing air conditioning can quickly become dangerous, especially for vulnerable people.
Jesse Joy Reagan, a student nurse at a Mountain Home hospital, said she is most concerned about children and the elderly.
"I worry about the little ones and the elderly the most because you have the medical devices and things. People need their oxygen," Reagan said.
Osborne said neighbors want more transparency from the utility.
"Don't say it's just a safety reason. We wanna know more than what's the safety reason? That's our million-dollar question," Osborne said.
Hanchey acknowledged that the cause of an outage is not always immediately known.
"There's a lot of times we just don't know the cause, so we'll put a note of 'under investigation' until we actually get people out there that can see what's going on and get accurate information to our customers," Hanchey said.
If your power goes out, Idaho Power said the fastest way to get updates is through its online outage map, which shows the status of an outage and estimated restoration times.
If your power goes out, the fastest way to get updates is through the Idaho Power website's online outage map, where you can see the status of an outage and estimated restoration times.
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