PORTLAND, Ore. — Tens of thousands of Portland General Electric (PGE) customers were left without power following Saturday's winter storm, and many have been waiting days to get reconnected as PGE crews grapple with the widespread damage.
Several customers were alarmed Sunday night by what looked like an alert from the utility company that read: "PGE advised that if your power is NOT restored this evening by 8:00pm PST, it is highly likely that power will not be restored until by NEXT Monday. They are shipping emergency transformers from Texas and expect that to be a TEN DAY process."
One person who received it told KGW it appeared on her cell phone through a Ring notification. A resident of Tigard sent KGW a screenshot of the message that she received around 7 p.m., asking for assistance to VERIFY it.
THE QUESTION
Is a PGE notification about emergency transformers and long wait times to restore power legitimate?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
No, the notifications did not come from PGE and are they are not legitimate.
WHAT WE FOUND
PGE has addressed the alerts directly in posts on its website and social media pages, warning customers that the notifications are false and it did not send them.
"We are aware of false information regarding estimated restoration times being spread on social channels and Ring Community posts," PGE stated. "This includes mention of shipping emergency transformers from Texas among other false rumors."
PGE has stated in news releases that it is relying on mutual aid from other states to help restore power, but that assistance comes in the form of additional field crew personnel from California, Idaho and Washington, not extra hardware from Texas.
The utility did state on its website on Sunday evening that restoration efforts will continue "into the week," but it did not offer an exact timeline and did not say that full restoration would take until "next Monday," as the false notification claims.
PGE has previously issued warnings about scam calls and letters that threaten imminent power shutoffs if customers don't pay supposedly overdue bills, although the notification on Sunday appears to have been only misinformation about the repair timeline rather than a scam to try to steal money from customers.
For the most up-to-date outage information, customers are advised to check PGE's outage map.
Got a question or a story about Portland or Oregon that you'd like us to VERIFY? Drop us a line at verify@kgw.com.
