PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) — At the peak of last month’s snow and ice storms, Oregon saw half a million homes without power, with crews replacing thousands of pieces of equipment to get the lights back on. Now, Portland General Electric is sharing with KOIN 6 News what it was like completing the hundreds of repairs.
Even the most seasoned PGE crew members said last month’s extreme winter weather was some of the worst they’ve come across. They said crews were gunning from one spot to another all day and all night, trudging through snow in the middle of the forest to get to some outages, during a week-long marathon.
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Things got so bad that PGE reached out to other utilities not in the storm’s path, asking to send any crews they could spare to help in the response. As a result, PGE went from 150 people to 1,800 crews trying to respond to the 524,600 who lost power during that week of storms.
More about PGE’s Jan. winter storm response by the numbers: they took 35,000 calls, fixed 1,681 cross arms and power poles, fixed 599 transformers and 92 distribution and transmission lines.