Storm damages power pole; Brentwood-Darlington goes dark

Published 12:00 am Sunday, December 22, 2024

A storm, with high winds, swept across Inner Southeast Portland on Tuesday, November 19th, blowing down some tree branches. Overall, though, there appeared to be little significant wind damage east of the Willamette River.

However, electric power flickered and then went out for a significant portion of Inner Southeast, centering on the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood. At 1:53 p.m., both East Precinct officers and a Portland Fire & Rescue crew were dispatched to the intersection of S.E. Flavel Street at 60th Avenue to investigate reports of an electrical transformer on fire.

A neighbor there told THE BEE that he’d heard a loud “pop”, and then saw fire flaring on the top of a wooden utility pole near the northwest corner of the intersection. “It looked like the insulator for the high-voltage wire failed, and [electricity] began arcing down the wet pole,” he said.

A main circuit breaker for the whole area tripped, the arcing stopped, and the fire self-extinguished. It was clear to arriving first-responders that a cross member on the top of the pole, holding the high-voltage wires, had burned through, snapped off, and the wires mounted on it were dangling on the service lines below.

Through the magic of Portland General Electric (PGE) technology, about 20 minutes later, that area was isolated, and electric power was rerouted, restoring service to most of the affected area – though the remainder had to wait for the repair to be completed.

“This outage was caused by an equipment failure,” later explained PGE Communications spokesperson John Farmer.

“The extended outage affected 425 customers,” he told THE BEE. “Our crews completed repairs and had the power back up and running for the remaining 425 homes and businesses just before midnight that day.”