Washington Governor Jay Inslee visited Spokane on Tuesday to meet with local officials dealing with the aftermath of a major windstorm that knocked out power to tens of thousands of area residents.
The governor met with officials from electrical utilities and Spokane city and county officials to discuss recovery efforts following the storm. He was told that while there were 180,000 homes and businesses without power following last Tuesday’s storm, there are still about 20,000 without power.
Inslee says efforts are now underway to see if federal assistance money can be secured to help the region:
“In the next week or so, we will be accumulating information about the damages in Spokane county, and we will be seeing if we can qualify for any disaster assistance. That remains to be seen: there are two levels, one individual assistance, the second public assistance to public agencies. We know sometimes those are higher bars to jump over than we would like.”
Inslee’s office made the same requests for federal aid after the wildfires this summer and did qualify for aid for the public sector, but not private individuals.
