Two unrelated outages – one due to bird – knock out power for hours in Redmond, Deschutes Jct. area

REDMOND, Ore. (KTVZ) – A pair of unrelated outages – one caused by a bird – knocked out power to thousands of Redmond and Deschutes Junction-area residents for hours on Tuesday.

The first power outage occurred around 2:45 a.m. on SW Second Street in Redmond. Pacific Power spokesman Brandon Zero said 3,889 customers lost power when two adjacent wires went out, causing damage to some equipment. It took nearly five hours, until about 7:25 a.m., to make repairs and fully restore power to those affected.

Later in the day, about 1,260 Central Electric Cooperative members lost power in the Deschutes Junction area, between Bend and Redmond, when a bird landed on a wire in a substation. Officials said that caused a short, forcing the circuit switch to open to protect all of the substation equipment.

Crews made the repairs and had power restored within two hours, CEC said.