Many residents in Petersburg woke up on Nov. 6 to discover a power outage, following damage caused by a storm to Ketchikan’s Bailey Substation the previous evening. Power across the entire transmission system was down, affecting Ketchikan and Wrangell for most of the morning as well.

A storm the previous evening featured winds between 43 and 61 miles per hour by 7 p.m. Gusts topping 90 mph were also reported at Ketchikan International Airport.

“We started getting calls in,” recounted Andy Donato, electric division director of Ketchikan Public Utilities (KPU). By 9 p.m. there were six...