Excerpt
Portland area residents take ‘wait and freeze’ approach to power outages
Jan. 16, 2024, 6:55 p.m.
Graham Nash and his wife lost power to their home near Forest Heights around 9:30 a.m. Saturday.
More than a day later, he was still waiting for Portland General Electric to restore it, and many others in the Portland area were shivering in their homes, too.
As of Sunday evening, PGE’s outage map showed 96,000 customers without power. An additional 10,000 Pacific Power customers were still without electricity statewide on Sunday, with a portion of those in the Portland area.
Roger Gray, a PGE customer in Lake Oswego, is drawing power from a back-up generator but said he felt frustrated that PGE hadn’t given him or his neighbors more information about the cause of the outage more than 24 hours ago or the timeline for the restoration of power. Gray, who works in the utility industry, said outages are bound to happen during extreme weather events and the abundance of large, inadequately maintained trees in many neighborhoods heightens the risk of downed lines.
But utility companies could do more to prepare their technology to meet customers’ needs during emergencies, so that people do not hit roadblocks when attempting to report or check the status of outages, as happened to many PGE customers this time, Gray said. “I’ve worked for six different utilities but not being able to get your website working so people can get information” is a problem that should be fixable, Gray said.
The outages caused some alarm for people with medical devices.
For Judy Irish, the power outage meant she lost heat and the ability to use the airway pressure mask — or CPAP machine — she uses to sleep due to what she described as “severe sleep apnea.”
“My house was in the low 40s this morning,” Irish wrote on Facebook, in response to a query from The Oregonian/OregonLive about how people were coping without power. “Didn’t get much sleep since I couldn’t use my CPAP machine. Hope power is restored ASAP.”
Irish said her younger brother came to her rescue with a generator, power cords, blankets, snacks and electric and propane heaters, although the propane heater already ran out of fuel.
Other strategies that people reported using in Facebook posts included firing up gas fireplaces, huddling beneath blankets, putting food from their non-operating freezers and refrigerators outside in an attempt to prevent spoilage and opening exterior doors as little as possible.
People with young children and pets were also anxious about the ongoing outages.
Tigard resident Amber Miller said her power went out around 1 p.m. Saturday. It left her, her two young children and their pets — four cats and a tortoise — sitting in a 40-degree home and with no idea of when the power would return.
https://www.oregonlive.com/weather/2024/01/portland-area-residents-take-wait-and-freeze-approach-to-power-outages.html