Tree on transmission line causes outage for 4,800

November 6, 2006

Over 4,800 Columbia River PUD customers lost power Friday morning after a logger fell a tree through a Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) transmission line on Stone Road.

The outage began at 9:40 a.m. and affected 2,489 customers served by Dutch Canyon Substation in Scappoose and 2,367 customers served by Tarbell Substation in Warren.

Power was restored to all customers served by Dutch Canyon Substation at 9:49 a.m. when BPA re-routed power through another transmission line to serve them. All but 87 of the customers served by Tarbell Substation had power restored at 11:05 a.m.

The remaining customers had longer outages because the BPA transmission line fell through a PUD distribution line when it came down. PUD crews restored power to 28 of these customers at 12:25 p.m. by isolating the spans of wire near the accident and energizing the rest. BPA and PUD crews then repaired the lines and restored power to the remaining 59 customers at 5:08 p.m.

"Accidents like this are a good reminder to all of us to use caution when working around power lines," said PUD Engineering & Operations Manager Steve Hursh. "Fortunately, no one was hurt and we were able to restore power quickly."

The logger who fell the tree through the transmission line will be billed for the cost of the repairs.