S. Bend power back on after animal-caused outage

An animal about the size of a raccoon got into a Pacific Power substation in southeast Bend and caused it to blow its fuses Sunday afternoon, knocking out power to more than 8,600 customers and blacking out homes, stores and traffic lights across southern Bend up to three hours.

The utility’s Cleveland Avenue substation, at SE Fourth Street and Cleveland Avenue, went out of service shortly before 3 p.m., said Pacific Power spokesman Bob Gravely.

Repair crews reported “that an animal of some variety got into a section of the substation, causing a line to fault and fuses to blow on both banks of transformers — that was probably the bang” many area residents heard, he said.

Asked if that meant the animal had perished in the encounter, Gravely said: “I would imagine” so.

“Crews are replacing the fuses and damaged equipment and will re-energize,” he said.

About half had their power back by shortly after 5 p.m. and the rest by about 5:50 p.m., Gravely said.

“We don’t know how the animal got past the protection meant to keep them out,” Gravely said. “The transformers themselves apparently are fine, so it was the fuses that blew, not the transformer itself.”

Pieces of equipment, called animal guards, melted in the incident, Gravely said, so “we don’t know how the animal climbed to where it did.”

Find updates on this and any large-scale Oregon outage at https://www.pacificpower.net/ed/po/ooi.html,

While much of the southern half of the city lost power, many residents in other areas of Bend saw a brief flicker or dimming of lights. Police and fire crews responded to alarms triggered by the outage.

We’ll have updates as available, and on NewsChannel 21 at Six.