July 20, 2019 7:45 a.m.
Many people in central Douglas County were impacted by a power outage on Friday afternoon.
Sam Carter, Regional Business Manager for Pacific Power told News Radio 1240 KQEN that approximately 32,000 customers were without power for about 40 minutes while crews worked to correct the issue. Carter said it was the loss of transmission from their Dixonville substation that was impacted, which is why the outage affected such a widespread area.
Outages were reported from Oakland to Winston and also affected customers of Douglas Electric Cooperative. Todd Munsey from that utility told KQEN that members from Umpqua, Melrose, Lookingglass, Tenmile, Camas Valley and other areas were impacted by the loss of the Pacific Power transmission feed.
Carter said the power went out at around 1:20 p.m. By just after 2:00 p.m. the power was back to most areas, though some remained without power until close to 3:00 p.m.
In Roseburg without working signals, traffic backed up quickly on main roads during the outage. A short jaunt across town turned into a lengthy trip for many. One resident reported that it took 45 minutes to get to Winston from downtown Roseburg. That trip normally takes 12 minutes.
Carter said Pacific Power is still sorting out what the actual original cause was, which led to the loss of transmission from the substation. He said the utility “appreciates everybody’s understanding” and added some perspective to the situation saying, “we are thankful that it wasn’t another February snow storm”.