Pacific Power’s ‘enhanced safety settings’ trigger outage affecting nearly 2,000 Bend customers; most restored

(Update: Utility confirms 'enhanced safety settings' caused outage; most have it back)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Nearly 2,000 Pacific Power customers on Bend's north end lost power Thursday afternoon, an outage caused by the utility's "enhanced safety settings" that officials said could last into the evening.

Pacific Power's outage map said 1,975 customers were affected by the outage that began around 2:55 p.m. The initial estimate said it could take until 6 p.m. to fully restore power, but most had it back by about 5 p.m., with 265 customers still out at that time.

The utility said crews had been notified and investigated the cause of the outage affecting residents and businesses in the 97701 and 97703 ZIP codes.

Pacific Power spokesman Simon Gutierrez confirmed to KTVZ News that the area is on the recently announced enhanced safety settings, put into place for some areas during fire season to reduce the risk of wildfire - but also increase the chances of more and longer power outages.

We're tracking updates and will have them online and on the air as soon as we can, including the KTVZ app.