Wildfires, Winds Knock Out Power To Tens Of Thousands

PORTLAND, Ore. — Tens of thousands of residents in Oregon have lost power from wildfires and strong winds that have plagued the area this week.  Utility crews have made significant progress over the past few days restoring power.

As of 4:30pm Friday, the most outages are still in Clackamas County where more than 14,500 customers are affected.  There are 9,700 outages in Jackson County, 1,900 in Lincoln County, 1,300 in Marion County along with a few hundred folks in each of Multnomah, Washington and Yamhill Counties.  No outages are reported in Clark County, Washington.

Portland General Electric proactively turned off the power to eight different high-risk fire areas in addition to the Mount Hood corridor along Highway 26.  Crews began restoring power in the Mount Hood area today, but service is expected to remain out through the weekend and for some customers into next week.  PGE crews have restored service to more than 212,000 customers so far.

Pacific Power shut off electricity to about 11,000 customers in Jackson County at the request of local authorities.  About 60,000 customers in their service area were without power at the peak of the outage.