Central Lincoln Peoples Utility District is investigating the cause of a 3-hour power outage Sunday, Sept. 15 that affected more than 6,000 customers along a wide section of the coast.
The 8:46 a.m. outage was because of a short circuit on the transmission line near a connection between it and Consumers Power along Highway 34, the utility said. Consumers Power provides electricity to rural areas of Lincoln, Benton and Linn counties.
Central Lincoln spokeswoman Chris Chandler said at the time CLPUD was providing power to Consumers Power customers up to the Alsea community and in the Bay View area north of Waldport.
Central Lincoln customers from South Beach to Cape Perpetua were impacted as well as Consumer Power customers along Highway 34 and east to Alsea. Power was restored by 11:30 a.m.
The exact cause that triggered the outage is still under investigation, Chandler said.
Because it occurred on a Sunday morning and was the first big outage of the fall, there was lots of attention paid to it on social media.
Chandler said Central Lincoln customers have several options for getting information about outages, including:
- Checking Central Lincoln’s outage map on the utility’s website clpud.org and clicking on “Outage Map.” Or, navigate directly to the outage map here: https://clpud.org/customer-information/customer-account-tools/real-time-outage-map/
- On social media, going to Central Lincoln PUD on Facebook; Twitter: @clpud for those using Twitter. Customers who do not use Twitter can view posts at www.twitter.com/CLPUD
- Calling its hotline at 866-484-3783 to report an outage.
- Making sure Central Lincoln has your current cell phone and/or landline numbers in its computer, so their system can quickly verify you are indeed a customer and can match phone numbers to physical addresses. This helps speed up the process when responding to outages, Chandler said.