CEC offers reward for shooter who caused Madras outage
Central Electric Cooperative said Monday it is offering a reward up to $2,500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever shot out a power line Sunday afternoon, prompting lengthy repairs and an 11-hour outage to 1,200 Madras-area members.
The outage began at about 2:40 p.m. Sunday when one of the transmission lines feeding into the Madras and Gateway substations lost power, causing a voltage imbalance on other transmission lines connected to the substation, said CEC Member Services Director Jeff Beaman.
That caused a complete loss of power to about 1,200 member accounts and a brownout effect to other accounts, he said. The two substations were de-energized until the cause of the power outage was determined and repaired. Final restoration was achieved at approximately 1:30 a.m. Monday .
During their patrol of the affected 69,000-volt line to locate the problem, crews discovered a 400-foot span of overhead wire severed by a gunshot.
The location was west of Highway 26 and north of Holly Lane, in desert land southeast of Madras and northeast of Terrebonne.
The amount of crew time, equipment use and materials required to repair the span will add up to several thousand dollars, Beaman said. Those costs are in addition to the amount of time affected CEC members were without power and its impact on their activities and operations.
Anyone with information about suspicious activity in the area is asked to call the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department’s non-emergency number, 541.475.6520 .
An unrelated, shorter outage on Bend’s Eastside was repaired and power restored hours earlier.
A problem with one of the main feeder lines at the Holliday Substation at Northeast 27th Street and Neff Road knocked out power to about 1,200 CEC members on Bend’s Eastside around 3:45 p.m., and it took until shortly before 6 p.m. to resolve.
The outages occurred on a cold day when temperatures only hit the 30s.
One affected area resident, Tori Reid, said on KTVZ’s Facebook page Sunday evening, “My house is already down to the 50s inside.”
