NASELLE – At 6:30 a.m. last Thursday, all of Willapa Valley, from the weigh station on Route 6 outside of Menlo, and east to the Pacific County line, lost power when a 115Kv transmission line located approximately miles outside of Naselle, severed due to unknown reasons. The line, the only power source at the time due to Bonneville scheduled routine maintenance of power pole replacement on the redundant side, also caused power to fail from Naselle and up the Long Beach peninsula. The failure caused 10,000 Pacific County PUD customers to be without power until approximately 2:30 p.m.
After BPA identified the problem, Pacific County PUD dispatched teams to re-configure power into the valley, restoring energy down the Route 6 corridor by 8:30 a.m.
Bonneville crews continued to work the peninsula and restored power in the early afternoon.
A spokesman for BPA identified that the line just outside of Naselle had no apparent reason to fail.
“We were also performing routine maintenance in the area, serviced by the line, which caused the failure to last so long,” said Doug Johnson, BPA Media spokesman.
“After understanding the problem, Pacific County PUD was able to re-configure power quickly on their side to re-establish power to the eastern part of the county,” Johnson said. “Looking at the issue it was prudent to repair the severed line as opposed to continue the scheduled maintenance. We were able to fix our side by around noon.”
After the line was re-energized, power was applied back through Pacific County PUD after ensuring the system was solid with total coverage re-established by approximately 2:30 p.m.
For current outage updates consult the Pacific County PUD website at www.pacificpud.org.