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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"Accidents like this are a good reminder to all of us to use caution when working around power lines," said PUD Engineering &amp; Operations Manager Steve Hursh. "Fortunately, no one was hurt and we were able to restore power quickly."<br /><br />The logger who fell the tree through the transmission line will be billed for the cost of the repairs. <br />