Officials in the Israel Electric Company are instructing residents of areas that are snow covered and without electricity to plan for a Shabbos without electricity. Officials report that while crew are out working, it is most unlikely that all areas will be back up and running by candle lighting time. Repair crews will continue working since it is pikuach nefesh due to the bitter cold.

The utility company advises families with small children and the elderly to turn to the city’s emergency dispatcher for assistance since power crews are unable to keep the pace with downed power lines. The main problem facing repairs crews is inaccessibility to areas without power since some of these neighborhoods have 50 centimeters (19.5 inches) of snow.

IEC officials warn the public not to come close to or attempt to touch or move any downed lines under any circumstances. To report an outage one may phone Israel Electric at 103 or the Jerusalem dispatcher at 106.

Some of the areas of the capital without power at this point include; Givat Masua, Bayit Vegan, Kiryat Yovel, Givat Shaul, Beit HaKerem, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ir Ganim, Reches Shlomo, Rechavia, Kiryat Moshe, Shaare Chessed, Ramot and areas of the city center.

In Yehuda and Shomron outages were reported in many yishuvim.

In the center of the country, outages were reported earlier in Bnei Brak, Herzliya, Ramat Gan and portions of Tel Aviv.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)