300 Power Workers are Repairing Wind Damaged Parts of Oregon

The number without power has grown significantly in Southeast Portland in Washington County over the past two hours.

Salem-News.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - PGE now has almost 300 personnel working to restore power, with 67 repair crews in the field. The number of outages is at 31,000 -- having hit 35,000 in the past hour. Progress will depend largely on the strength of the winds over the rest of the afternoon.

Outages are spread throughout the PGE service territory. The number without power has grown significantly in Southeast Portland in Washington County over the past two hours.

High winds knocked over trees and scattered tree limbs since early this morning.

PGE prioritizes outage response according to safety first, which means downed lines and critically needed customers such as hospitals and fire stations.

Their next priority they say is impact: restoring lines that serve the most customers.

The transmission lines, the "super highways" are restored first, followed by feeder lines, the equivalent of arterial streets, followed by individual neighborhoods.

As of this hour, some of largest numbers of outages are in:
- West Beaverton/Aloha: 4,800
- North Beaverton/Cedar Hiils: 3,900
- Sherwood: 4000
- Southeast Portland: 6,700
- Silverton and surrounding area: 5,100
- Salem: 2,200
- Molalla area 1,500

East Multnomah County has relatively few outages at this hour.

If you see a downed utility line, any line, don't touch it, don't even go near it. Don't attempt to clear debris from roads near downed lines or hanging lines. Call PGE.

Salem residents should call 503-399-7717, Portland residents should call 503-464-7777, and residents throughout the rest of Oregon should call 1-800-544-1795 for outages or downed lines.