January 22, 2025 4:00 a.m.

The failure of a piece of electrical equipment in a central substation led to a massive power outage around Douglas County on Tuesday morning.

Pacific Power Senior Communications Specialist Simon Gutierrez told News Radio 93-9 FM and 1240 KQEN that the outage began impacting customers in the Roseburg district at 5:09 a.m. Gutierrez said it took some time for repair crews to assess and track down the issue. As a result of the equipment failure, the utility lost transmission to its service area, impacting a total of about 35,000 customers at the outage peak.

Gutierrez said crews began to restore customers in steps at 8:37 a.m. with most customers restored at 9:50 a.m. Some customers have told KQEN that their power wasn’t restored until around 12:00 p.m. Pacific Power’s website listed around 300 customers without power at that time.

Gutierrez said the cause of the equipment failure is under investigation.

The outage also impacted customers of Douglas Electric Cooperative in rural parts of the county. At the height of the outage, over 4,300 DEC members were without power.

With the question of how long it would take to restore power up in the air early in the incident, most Douglas County schools ultimately decided to close for the day. However, Umpqua Community College opened at 10:00 a.m.