Pacific Power lays out causes of long C.O. outages
(Update with Pacific Power info)
A string of lengthy power outages hit thousands of Pacific Power customers in Bend and the Metolius area on Sunday, the last with a bright blue flash seen for miles and a boom that shook some nearby homes.
The first outage, affecting 1,167 customers, mostly on Bend’s Eastside, began near 2 p.m. due to a problem near the Cleveland Avenue substation in southeast Bend, said utility spokesman Tom Gauntt.
“Some underground connections had failed,” he said, “and it took a good deal of time to track the issue down and fix it.”
As a result, those customers didn’t have power restored until 10:12 p.m., Gauntt said.
To complete the repairs, crews rerouted some power, he said. After the main repair work was done, crews were returning the rerouted power to its normal routes when another piece of equipment failed, which caused a large flash and boom, Gauntt said.
Another 838 customers lost power then. Crews were able to get their power restored by 2:16 a.m.
It was not a transformer that blew, but a piece of gear called a “bus,” the structure atop a power pole where several wires join together.
“Transformers are very specific things, and when they do blow, it is especially bad, as they are packed with oil to keep them cool and safe,” Gauntt said. “So when they blow, it’s louder and more fiery than something like this.”
To the north, another outage affected 420 customers in the Metolius area south of Madras for hours Sunday night as well
The outages occurred days after updates to he utility’s outage page that now show a map with the general location of an outage, how many people affected, the status of repairs and the estimated time for restoration.
The late-night bus failure at Fourth Street and Cleveland Avenue brought a bright blue flash seen as far away as Redmond and at least same neighbors who said it rocked their homes.
Meanwhile, another equipment problem late Sunday knocked out power to 420 customers in an area between Madras and Metolius. Pacific Power those customers had power back on by 10 p.m., according to the outage map.
