Authorities say Pacific Power & Electric equipment outage affecting Ashland, Phoenix, Talent, Greensprings and Northern California
By Morgan Rothborne, Cameron Aalto and Emma Coke, Ashland.news
Power was restored to many parts of Ashland within an hour mid-day Wednesday after a tripped power line sent large parts of Southern Oregon and Northern California into a temporary blackout. Ashland Communications Officer Dorinda Cottle stated the city’s electric department worked in tandem with Pacific Power staff to correct the issue and some Ashland customers saw their power return within 35 minutes. Ashland Emergency Management Coordinator Kelly Burns said Wednesday afternoon the issue may have been caused by a piece of city equipment.
“The outage in Ashland was caused due to loss of transmission caused by animal interference,” said Pampi Chowdhury, a representative for Pacific Power in an email sent to Ashland.news.
Around 11:30 a.m. a power outage affecting the entire Southern Oregon and Northern California regions was traced to a transmission line operation by Pacific Power & Electric.
Electrical crews from Pacific Power & Electric in coordination with Ashland Electric Department were working on resolving the issue, the city of Ashland said at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, with full restoration expected in less than an hour for those still without power, the update said.
Power went out at about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday throughout downtown Ashland. Traffic lights failed and traffic automatically operated as if it were a four-way stop. People wandered confused outside to see what the commotion was as emergency vehicles coalesced downtown, with lights and sirens on.
Parked outside of City Hall, Fire Chief Ralph Sartain, asked what was going on, said that he had no idea. He said that the traffic lights were out and that he had to switch to a different radio frequency to communicate with other firefighters.
Outside of City Hall, Public Works director Scott Fleury and Deputy Public Works Director Mike Morrison said they were also trying to determine the cause of the issue and respond. Razor stated the city has 13 generators at all critical city facilities such as city hall, the water treatment plant, and the police station, so they can continue operating during an outage.
Ashland Emergency Management Coordinator Kelly Burns stated that he had information from Tom McBartlett, director of the city Electric Department, that a large transmission line for Pacific Power had some major issue that crews are in route to assess and resolve the issue. Burns said then that no time frame had been given for resolving the issue.
Courtney Young, cafe lead for Mix in downtown Ashland, said that their business would be able to operate until the registers went out. “We can operate in a very limited manner,” she said, but that if the power remains off for an extended period of time, the business would need to close.
Brickroom manager Zahara Cullumbine said that, while he was worried about his business, he was mostly worried about the safety of his team and the community. “Safety is first,” Cullumbine said.
Morrison, the city deputy public works director, said, “This will be an interesting day.”
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at morganr@ashland.news. Email Ashland.news reporter intern Emma Coke at emmasuecoke@gmail.com. Email Cameron Aalto at aaltoc@sou.edu.
July 31: Corrected Mike Morrison’s title.
