By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Two Bonneville Power Administration transmission lines feeding electricity to much of the central Oregon coast went down in a wind and lightning storm Monday evening, plunging thousands of Central Lincoln People’s Utility District customers into the dark for nearly five hours or more.
The outage affected 16,500 CLPUD meters – everything from homes to businesses to streetlights — from Lincoln Beach in the north to Heceta Head in the south. The utility’s customers from Seal Lion Caves to North Bend were not affected – other than localized outages because of storm damage to the utility’s lines.
“Everything is out,” said CLPUD spokesman Eric Chambers.
One — but not both — of the BPA lines was repaired about 10:45 p.m. Monday, restoring power to much — but not all — of the affected areas.
Chambers said late Monday night that while one BPA line was back in service “there will still be work to do on area outages on our lines.”
“If your power has not yet been restored,” Chambers said in a text at 10:51 p.m. Monday, “your outage will likely last into tomorrow. We are still single-sourced from BPA, meaning that the backup line is still down and additional out ages could occur overnight.”
Chambers said about 8,500 customers were without power late Monday night, out of the 45,000 meters in CLPUD’s service area that stretches from Lincoln Beach to North Bend.
By mid-morning Tuesday, the utility had 44 active outages affecting 259 meters — including a cluster of five outages just south of the Yachats River. Power was restored to all of LPUD’s Lincoln County customers by Tuesday evening.
Philomath-based Consumers Power Inc., which has hundreds of customers north and east of Waldport and east of Newport into Benton County, was also experiencing outages but indicated they were due to heavy wind and rain that raked the coast much of Monday.
Chambers said BPA believes the first of the two lines was knocked out by lightning Monday afternoon. The second line went down about 6 p.m. because of falling trees. Both lines feed CLPUD’s main substation in Toledo, he said.
“It’s the main transmission lines that come into our system … nothing on our side,” he said.
The BPA outage did not affect the Lincoln City and Otis areas north of Lincoln Beach, which are served by PacifiCorp.
Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport switched seamlessly to its backup generators when the power went out about 6 p.m., said a hospital spokeswoman.
The Lincoln County School District sent out a notice that schools throughout the county would start two hours late Tuesday – if power was restored overnight. Oregon Coast Community College classes were also pushed back two hours.
Chambers said CLPUD crews were out Monday working on localized outages before the BPA lines went down. They will finish those issues and then wait to see what they need to tackle when the main lines are re-energized.
The outage was similar to the January 2024 takedown of BPA lines from the Willamette Valley to the coast – but that outage lasted up to four days in parts of Lincoln County.
“If any lessons came out of last year, it is that people need to be as prepared as possible,” Chambers said.
In Newport, Monday’s outage also led to the city issuing a “boil water” notice for some neighborhoods on the north end of the city due to the loss of water pressure in the distribution system during the power outage. Potentially harmful bacteria may be present in the water supply for the specific areas, which may lead to illness if used or consumed, the city said in a news release. That notice was cancelled Wednesday after tests Tuesday showed the water was safe to use without boiling.
BPA issues uncertain
The Bonneville Power Administration has been in the news the past two weeks because the federal agency’s workforce was being cut under orders from the Trump administration.
But no one Monday was willing to speculate whether those cuts would affect fixing the lines leading to Lincoln County.
Roughly 130 of BPA’s more than 3,000 employees were told they’d been dismissed in early February, but the agency brought back 30 of those last week, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. The cuts have largely targeted federal workers in their first year or two on the job, when they are still in probationary status and have fewer civil service protections.
But the 30 probationary workers who have now been asked to leave were later deemed critical to BPA’s core work to manage power across the Pacific Northwest, strengthen the electrical grid and keep the lights on, according to staff who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, but whose identities OPB has verified through public records.
Even after rescinding those terminations, the agency is eliminating about 430 total positions – the 100 probationary employees who are still being fired, the 240 who resigned in exchange for a buyout, and 90 people who received job offers that were then canceled.
BPA distributes hydropower from 31 federal dams and operates 75 percent of the Northwest’s power grid.
‘“If any lessons came out of last year, it is that people need to be as prepared as possible,” Chambers said.’ Tell me about it, LOL~ I was starting to wonder how long I could survive on Fig Newtons and Tang!
Good job, Central Lincoln People’s Utility District.
They work *so* hard and in such nasty conditions. I’m grateful for them.
Note to Quentin Smith—
So my alarm clock read 4:30 earlier, which told me two things—that the power was back on and that it was early, but okay to get up. Turns out 4:30 meant four and a half hours since the power was restored. It’s not even 4 as I write this, but I wanted to thank you for the article. That was an informative and well written summary of the local power situation last night, and so unexpected as I scrolled my iPhone for news this morning. I just wanted to reach out and say, thanks. Cheers, JG in South Beach
“But no one Monday was willing to speculate whether those cuts would affect fixing the lines leading to Lincoln County.”
Because the federal administration is performing an audit on every federal agency, no doubt, and cutting out the fat—administrative bureaucracy at the federal level—which then makes sense that these workers would have been found essential, as they are part of ground crews. I don’t appreciate the subtle spin you’ve played against our current POTUS because of his commitment to reducing our federal deficit (not an easy job) which the majority of Americans see as essential to our democracy, and would ask you to be better informed of the nature of things before printing political spin and inflammatory false-information.
Our POTUS has no interest in reducing federal debt. He is only interested in using tax payers money to line the pockets of billionaires. This is corruption, not governance.
It is the job of real news organizations to address questions the public have. Lots of people who had power outages on Monday are questioning if the reduction in workforce impacted their service. Kudos to Yachats News for appropriately addressing those concerns with the information at hand.
What? Trump is interested in lowering the federal deficit? His billionaire tax break (unpaid for) will add trillions to our (yours and mine) deficit. Please pay attention to current events.
Any idiot can cut costs – fire people, refuse to buy supplies, etc. It takes a good business head to make an entity function well. Cheap is just cheap. If you want value, you have to build it. And you don’t build it by firing workers. That’s just stupid. I hope I’m not being too subtle.
I live in Lincoln City and I am very grateful to the people who work for the power companies who go out in horrible weather to repair power lines. I saw a guy in a cherry picker working on a power line in high winds on Sunday and I said as I passed him in my car, “Whatever they are paying you, it isn’t enough!”
I am also grateful for Yachats News! It’s where I turn for anything significant happening in Lincoln County.
Thank you!
The cuts to federal workers have been anything but careful, considered and based on a reasonable evaluation. It’s mindless hacking with a chainsaw, as Elon so wonderfully demonstrated at the CPAC convention last weekend. Trump is letting a billionaire ruin our country.
This story is another example why those reading it should contribute to support YachatsNews, soon to be Lincoln Chronicle.
Even though I have no idea why he wants to work so much when he’s retired, Quinton Smith swung into action last night when the power went out and pounded out a good story explaining what happened. And when the power came back on for many of us he updated the story even though it was almost 11:00 at night.
I saw zero other news stories on the subject locally, including from the Newport paper which has been pretty much gutted by Salem-based Country Media.
So if you want to learn about local news within a reasonable time of it happening, please contribute to YachatsNews.
I could not agree more. Glad to support Yachats News. I’m glad somebody was keeping track.
Thanks for the clear reporting on this outage and the recent workforce reductions at BPA. The smart management method to reduce government spending, to “cut out the fat”, starts with careful analysis of each department. Then identify the essential services and top performing employees. Next, identify the non-essential services and low performing employees. Then carefully, over time, close down the non-essential agencies and departments (this is the job of Congress) and reduce the non-essential staffing. And take care to retain the essential and top performers. It is possible to have cost savings without impacting services. This is smart management.
Since Jan 20 the Department of Government Efficiency has not used this smart cost reduction method. Snap judgment shutdowns of agencies and departments (bypassing Congress and legal procedure), indiscriminate severance offers and firing people, without concern for the effect on essential services, is not smart. This blind hacking method results in the government (and the BPA) losing top performing and essential workers. What effect will this hacking method have on services that we taxpayers (and utility customers) depend on? We will soon find out.