By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Four days after a major storm blasted the central and southern Oregon coasts knocking out power to 10,000 customers, Central Lincoln People’s Utility District said Thursday night it had restored power to all but 300 – just in time for another wind and rain storm.
The storm Sunday night and Monday had wind gusts as high as 92 mph, knocking out power to more than 10,000 CLPUD customers in Lincoln, Lane, Douglas and Coos counties along the coast. It was accompanied with at least 1½ inches of rain – and followed by days of heavy rains totaling up to four inches.
At the peak of the storm there were 390 outages affecting 10,000 of Central Lincoln’s 41,000 customers. That number had been cut in half by Tuesday and was down to around 300 Thursday night.
Central Lincoln said Thursday it was still trying to restore service in a troublesome area stretching from Cape Perpetua to Carl Washburne State Park affecting more than 100 customers. Utility spokeswoman Chris Chandler said broken poles and downed lines in steep terrain was making it very difficult to make repairs.
“Normally we’d use helicopters to reach those areas, but it’s been too windy,” she said. “It’s almost vertical.”
Central Lincoln had five crews working on repairs in that area Thursday, she said.
The damage from Monday’s storm was severe enough that Central Lincoln took the unusual step of asking other Oregon utilities for help with extra crews under a mutual aid agreement. It got five crews from utilities in Salem, Lane and Douglas counties, two of which were returning home Thursday night.
“The coast got hammered,” said Chandler, spokeswoman for the Newport-based utility that stretches along the coast from Lincoln Beach to North Bend.
The winds hit hardest between 8 p.m. Sunday and 2 a.m. Monday, with gusts as high as 92 mph on Cape Perpetua, 52 mph in Yachats and 62 in Newport, according to local weather watchers and the National Weather Service.
The wind knocked down trees and branches throughout the area, closing some roads temporarily.
In messages to its customers and on Facebook, Central Lincoln warned some hard-to-reach customers to be prepared to be without power for four to five days. Chandler said it was even using a boat to get crews to some houses on Tenmile Lake in Coos County that were accessible only by water.
“We appreciate our customers’ patience and kindness,” she said.
The winds were so strong at one point late Sunday night, Chandler said, that the utility recalled its repair crews for safety reasons before sending them back out at 1:30 a.m. Monday.
“That doesn’t happen very often,” she said. “It just wasn’t safe.”
Although the area was drenched with rain and an additional four inches fell along the coast by Thursday, the National Weather Service does not expect major flooding along the Alsea or Siletz rivers.
The big concern overnight Thursday is if a new, but less powerful windstorm would cause more issues.
“The big thing is how bad the storm tonight will be,” Chandler said.
