Drunk Driver Causes Small Blackout

SPOKANE — Around 150 households remained without electricity Friday morning, hours after a drunk driver took out a power pole in North Spokane.

Originally, some 1700 Avista customers were without power in an area surrounding the one-vehicle collision. It happened at around 1 a.m. Friday near the intersection Frederick and Post where the “driver of a 1991 Honda Accord had struck the ‘Guy Wire’ of an Avista power pole causing a power outage for several city blocks,” in the words of the Spokane Police Department.

After police talked to the driver – 20-year-old Kaitlin Pallardy – they determined she was uninjured but also appeared to have been drinking. She was booked for a DUI and processed into the Spokane County Jail system.

Avista restored power to the majority of blackened households overnight Thursday, but said the few remaining outages wouldn’t be brought back online until sometime Friday afternoon.

No injuries were reported in the incident.