SANDY, Ore. — After a snowstorm Saturday and an ice storm Tuesday, many are glad the worst weather has passed. But for some homeowners who’ve been without power since the beginning, each day is more difficult.
“We can’t do laundry because we have no electricity, no running water. We’re in a situation,” John Gipe said.
Gipe lives east of Sandy, along the Sandy River, tucked away from the main road.
On Saturday, a tree crashed down from the hillside behind their house and into their son’s bedroom. Fortunately, he was not injured.
“My son’s bed sits about underneath where that tree trunk is,” Gipe said gesturing toward the tree. “He woke up under ceiling panels and glass.”
Gipe’s neighbor is worried about the same thing happening on her property.
“There’s one particular tree that I can hear creaking in the wind,” Laura Waldron said. “Hopefully it doesn’t fall on us.”
Waldron and her husband are also dealing with a power outage.
“I don’t think we were expecting five days of an outage,” she said. “We’re still out and I don’t think it’s going to come back on today.”
Neither Waldron or Gipe know when the power will be restored. Gipe says he's received a few texts from Portland General Electric (PGE), but there’s no estimated time for restoration.
“Their only response is to plan accordingly and we don’t know what to plan for because they can’t give us any solid information,” Gipe said.
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In a statement, PGE says they’ve restored power for over 150,000 customers since Saturday and are “working around the clock to restore power to those remaining customers”.
A spokesperson told KGW in an email that, “ In some instances, crews are finding more extensive damage than originally anticipated, causing restoration times to get pushed out.”
It’s not clear if that’s what happened to both families. In the meantime, neighbors are leaning on each other as they wait for power to be restored.
“I’m going to go get propane and gas for a neighbor,” said Adam Popovics, who lives further down the street. “I provided a lot of different things propane bottles for different neighbors.”