Third C. Oregon power outage of day hits Tumalo
More than 400 Central Electric Cooperative members in the Tumalo area lost power for two hours or more Thursday night in the third sizable blackout on the High Desert in five hours.
CEC officials said more about 430 members lost power around 8:30 p.m. and most had it back about two hours later when a main line served by the Tumalo Substation was re-energized.
The outage was caused by the failure of a connection in a section of underground line, they said. While power was rerouted for most members, about 30 in the area of Tumalo Rim Drive and Tumalo Rim Court were expected to remain without power for another to to six hours while crews made final repairs to the damaged section of line.
A second protective device designed to open a circuit and limit the scope of an outage failed to operate, causing the outage to extend beyond the immediate area.
Updates can be tracked at: http://www.cec.coop/outage/
A wind-related problem knocked out power for about 2,400 Madras-area Pacific Power customers for about a half-hour Thursday afternoon, officials said. The utility later sent repair crews to a smaller but longer outage in southwest Bend.
The Madras outage began shortly after 3 p.m. and darkened homes, stores and traffic signals across much of the Jefferson County community. Repair crews had the power back on around 3:35 p.m., said utility spokesman Ry Schwark.
“The wind caused a (circuit) breaker to lock open at the substation, so as outages go it was a relatively quick fix,” Schwark said.
A resident reported most shops and businesses were in the dark, and that the traffic signals outage made traffic — already affected by road construction — a bigger mess.
Just as the power was restored, Central Oregon Community College sent an alert that its Madras campus was closing immediately due to the outage, with classes scheduled at or after 3:30 p.m. being canceled.
Schwark said an underground cable failed, and utility officials said it could take until around 8 p.m. to dig it up and replace it.
