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Strong winds and downed trees took out electric lines throughout the southern Kenai Peninsula on Wednesday evening, causing several power outages.

"It looks like around 7 p.m. the wind was really blowing because that's when all three incidents occurred," said Joe Gallagher, public relations coordinator with Homer Electric Association.

The main outage began at 7:20 p.m., according to Gallagher, when a tree came down on a high-voltage transmission line about four miles south of Ninilchik, tripping three Homer Electric substations off-line. The substations affected were in Anchor Point, Kasilof, and Soldotna, and combined they serve a total of approximately 9,000 HEA members.

Once repair crews identified the cause of the outage, HEA was able to begin incrementally restoring power to the affected areas starting at about 8 p.m., with power restored to most areas by 8:30 p.m. However, the winds also caused damage to two lower-voltage distribution lines in other areas, causing scattered outages that lasted longer.

"In Ninilchik, we had a tree cut through a line on Sunshine Drive," Gallagher said. "It left 196 HEA members without power from 7:10 p.m. to 11:46 p.m."

At roughly the same time in the North Cohoe Loop area of Kasilof, a tree also impacted a line on Florence Avenue, about 2.5 miles past Web-Ramsel Road.

"The 158 HEA members in that area didn't get power back on until 2 a.m. (on Thursday)," Gallagher said.

John Papineau, a forecaster with the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Anchorage, confirmed there were calls from residents living in Kasilof and other nearby areas who were concerned about the wind.

"It was a pretty good first blow of the season," he said. "Along Turnagain Arm we had wind gusts that peaked at 81 mph."

Closer to the central peninsula, winds speeds were up, but not as severe, according to Papineau, not even in the areas of the power outages.

"In Kasilof, at around 7 p.m. winds speeds of 8 to 10 mph were recorded with peaks to 17 mph," he said. "The biggest peak was 22 mph and that was around midnight."

Joseph Robertia can be reached at joseph.robertia@peninsulaclarion.com.