Update: Power companies have multiple crews working to restore power Wednesday morning in Anchorage and surrounding areas caused by the wind storm.
The Anchorage School District, Grace Christian, and UAA campuses in Anchorage, Eagle River-Chugiak, and JBER have canceled due to the power outages.
The Governor's office has announced that all "non-essential" state employees do not report to work.
Around 12:30 p.m., Chugach Electric spokesperson Sarah Wiggers said 6 to 9-thousand customers were without power and said power should be restored by Wednesday evening.
Wiggers said there are some isolated pockets without power and might take longer to restore depending on how long it takes to clear debris.
Chugach Electric said it has three major feeders to fix on the Hillside and Debarr areas early afternoon.
Chugach said it customers can now call and report locations that need repairs, so crews can spot and fix.
At 6:30 a.m., Chugach Electric said approximately 22,000 customers are without service. Multiple crew are "road hunting" down trees and lines.
Customers were asked to only call Chugach Electric if they see down lines that are a hazard earlier Wednesday morning.
Sarah Wiggers, with Chugach Electric, said the night darkness was making it hard for crews to located lines and "fingers crossed hoping noon will look a lot better for us."
Areas affected most by the outages under Chugach Electric were Debarr, Hillside, Boniface, Huffman, La Touche, O'Malley, Raspberry and Turnagain.
Around 10:30 a.m., Wiggers said 18,000 customers were without power. Chugach said crews were working to get feeders up and 16 were down earlier Wednesday morning and were down to 10 feeders.
Wiggers said Chugach Electric can focus on individual calls when crews are down to 4 feeders.
As of 10:45 a.m., Municipal Light and Power said most customers should have power back on and that the windstorm knocked out power to nearly all 30,000 customers Tuesday night.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson said the "installation closed for today for non-essential personnel," and "this may not apply to all JBER organizations. Contact your supervisor if you are not sure."
Charter College said it will operate under a half-day session. President Richard McLean said Charter morning classes have been canceled and afternoon and evening sessions are still scheduled.
All ASD after-school activites have also been canceled.
Matanuska Electric Association report outages continue to affect areas throughout Eagle River and parts in Wasilla, Houston, Butte, Meadow Lakes, Lazy Mountain and Talkeetna.
MEA said trees falling on power lines or uprooted resulted in damage to both the "high-voltage transmission and low-voltage distribution systems" and about 5000 customers were without power as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Kevin Brown, MEA Communications Manager, said that 4,000 customers were without power as of 10:20 a.m. Wednesday.
Brenda Hewitt, Public Information Officer with Alaska Department of Transportation, said all flights should be business as usual. Hewitt confirmed some passenger flights were diverted Tuesday night and no cargo flights have been affected.
Local media outlets were also affected by power outages, with Channel 2 operating on backup power for several hours early Wednesday.
Printing and distribution of Wednesday's Anchorage Daily News issue was delayed after its presses lost power, but copies should be available at single-copy outlets by late morning or early afternoon; subscribers will receive the Wednesday issue along with their Thursday papers.
Power at the newspaper plant was out from late Tuesday night until early Wednesday morning.
Anchorage Parks and Recreation said Parks maintenance is "working hard to resolve immediate safety concerns in our parks and on our trails." People can report unsafe conditions by calling 343-4554 or by using this online form.
KTUU's Corey Allen-Young, Abby Hancock, Browyn Saito, and Chris Klint contributed to Wednesday updates of this story. This is a developing story. Please check KTUU.com and the Channel 2 newscasts for updates.
Original: A powerful wind storm struck Southcentral Alaska Tuesday night, causing widespread power outages in the Anchorage area.
Electrical outages hit the Hillside, Midtown, South Anchorage and near downtown. There were also reports of outages in the Eagle River/Chugiak area.
Burk Wick with Chugack Electric said late Tuesday night "We have lots of feeder and transmission lines out. We are kind of doing triage right now to determine where the problems are."
Chugach Electric did not have any firm estimates of the number of its customers that were without power, but Wick guessed it was more than 10,000.
Municipal Light & Power also faced widespread outages. A spokesman told Channel 2's Jason Lamb Tuesday night that he was estimating that 10-15-thousand of the utility's 30-thousand customers were without power.
There were no estimates about when service would be restored to affected areas.
The Anchorage Police and Fire Deapartments responding to numerous reports of downed trees.
