PORTLAND, Ore. — Tens of thousands of people around the Portland metro area remain without electricity Friday afternoon following another round of freezing rain for some spots on Thursday, though Portland General Electric (PGE) has made progress, restoring power to more than 15,000 customers since mid-morning Friday.
PGE estimates that there are 14,073 customers are without power, with 2,034 reported outages, as of 11:11 p.m. Friday. That's down from more than 55,000 customers who were without power at around 10:30 a.m. Friday.
The increased outages came after PGE said it made significant restoration progress after the ice storm earlier this week. By Thursday morning, PGE reported that it had restored power to 96% of customers who had lost it during this week's winter weather.
But power outages in the Portland area began steadily climbing late Thursday afternoon amid strong winds and continued freezing rain. Through the afternoon, outages steadily climbed from around 15,000 without power at 4 p.m. to over 20,000 in one hour, reaching a peak of more than 55,000 Friday morning.
PGE said via email Thursday night that they were "down to many smaller repairs (i.e. side road and backyard)," as well as "completing repairs in more isolated areas that can be more difficult to access or take longer to fix."
They also reported more impacts to their substation feeder breakers due to strong winds and freezing rains, which are also causing more outages south/southwest of Portland and in the Bethany area.
PGE said it has nearly 1,700 active personnel on work crews or support staff, including many assistance crews from neighboring states. Downed trees and power lines and accumulating ice from the snow and ice storms have caused most of the outages.
Other utility companies report uptick in power restored
Pacific Power said on Friday that it has restored power to 99% of its customers and is down to 200 customers without power, as of1 1:20 pm.
"Pacific Power anticipates that most customers will have service restored by Friday evening, with some outages possibly extending into Saturday depending on the severity of damage encountered," the utility company said in a statement.
The company reported around 146,000 customers who experienced power outages during the winter storm, peaking on Saturday at 46,000 and Wednesday at 30,000.
Clark Public Utilities said it has less than 40 customers without power as of 11:20 p.m.
Download the KGW News app: Download for iPhone here | Download for Android here
Stream newscasts for free on KGW+ on Roku, Amazon Fire and Apple TV: How to add app to your device here
See a typo in this article? Email web@kgw.com for corrections.