Sisters businesses, school among 4,000 hit by outage

(Update: adding comments from CEC, affected business and restaurant)

A switch failure at Central Electric Cooperative’s Sisters substation knocked out power to nearly 4,000 members for about two hours on Tuesday, costing some restaurants and other merchants key lunch-hour customers.

“They do not know exactly what caused the switch to fail,” said Brent ten Pas, director of member and public relations with the CEC. “So typically the first response is to get the power up and running, and then they will do a full analysis and investigation to try and determine the cause of the failure of the switch.”

Ten Pas said storms are usually the largest contributors to switch failures.

Crews responded to the outage around 11:15 a.m. and the repairs were completed and power restored about 1:15 p.m., a bit less than the three-hour original estimate, according to a posting on CEC’s outage information page.

Javier Luna, owner of Rancho Viejo, was among those affected by the outage. His Mexican restaurant opens at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays, but that’s around the same time the power went out​​​, so Rancho Viejo stayed closed.

Luna said the lunch window typically brings in about a third of the daily sales for his restaurant. He also said he sent his six employees home because he was unsure when the power would come back on.

“I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to call them back in, once the power’s up and running, because I do have to get this going,” Luna said. “There are a lot of people walking already. We’ve had some customers that were trying to come in the restaurant. We just had to tell them that there’s no power.”

The Cascade Trailstop Market was another affected business. Owner Drew Herburger said the convenience store stayed open for cash purchases only. He estimated there was a 10% loss in sales because of the outage.

“Lack of power doesn’t allow us to have the open signs on and flashy, catchy stuff that reels in the tourists and the passers-by,” Herburger said. “All the locals are aware of the power outage, so they’re not going out and doing their typical stuff.”

Herburger also owns Melvin’s Fir Street Market, across the street. He said electrical work planned at the store on Tuesday had to be put on pause.

Sue Leek, owner of MacKenzie Creek Mercantile, said she stayed open as well. She passed out flashlights to her customers to use while they shopped.

Sisters Elementary School was the only school affected by the outage. Students were given flashlights to read books in the dark.