By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Central Lincoln Peoples Utility District will cut power to customers from the south edge of Yachats to Carl Washburne State Park for up to 5½ hours Thursday, Oct. 10 – but it will not affect downtown Yachats businesses or City Hall.
The outage will affect 470 residences on Bayview Terrace, in the Quiet Water and Koho subdivisions, south along Yachats Ocean Road and U.S. Highway 101, the Cape Perpetua Visitors Center and all the way to Washburne.
It will not affect downtown Yachats businesses, City Hall or the Yachats Commons, said Ty Hillebrand, director of engineering and operations for Central Lincoln.
“There are no business impacts in town,” Hillebrand told YachatsNews on Thursday.
The customers who will experience the outage have been notified once via the utility’s reverse-notification that calls the telephone number associated with their account. Customers will be called again Wednesday as a reminder, Hillebrand said.
Seven commercial customers south of the Yachats River were called personally, he said.
“If you didn’t get a phone call, then you’re not affected,” Hillebrand said.
Some confusion over the extent of the outage occurred after city of Yachats utility customers got their monthly bills Wednesday. Inside was a small, special insert saying that Central Lincoln was planning the outage from noon to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10 and that electricity would not be available at City Hall for phones, Wifi and any payments.
People on social media soon said the outage was for all of Yachats – without defining any boundaries. Thursday morning, restaurants in downtown Yachats posted on Facebook that they would be open for business as usual and invited people without electricity to come visit.
City Manager Shannon Beaucaire said the city wanted to alert residents that City Hall services would be limited Thursday after its facilities manager received an email from a Central Lincoln representative in Reedsport. The email confirmed the outage – without specifying boundaries — and said “if you have generators available to rely on for the work day you should have them ready.”
Hillebrand said Central Lincoln was trying to find the source of the confusion and contacting the city to ask them to update or correct its message.
The outage is occurring because Central Lincoln needs to replace or move equipment in the Quiet Water subdivision and on Cape Perpetua. It is bringing in crews to do the work in one afternoon rather than have piecemeal outages over a month’s time, Hillebrand said.
Because the utility has to work on federal land and Cape Perpetua will have the longest outage at up to five hours, Hillebrand said they worked with the Siuslaw National Forest and Cape Perpetua Visitors Center to pick the time and date of the outage.
“We do a lot of work to plan outages,” he said. “We have a good opportunity to do both maintenance projects at the same time and not inconvenience people further.”
Outages south of Cape Perpetua should only last 30 minutes, Hillebrand said. In Quiet Water it should be 2-3 hours.
Central Lincoln officials also reminded customers to contact it if they have changed or added phone numbers so they can be alerted about outages or other emergencies. Emergency preparedness information is also available on its website.
