A downed wire caused a significant power outage overnight Friday in the area around the substation near SEH America west of Interstate 205 in Vancouver.
The outage affected customers in the vicinity of a substation on Northeast 112th Avenue, in the vicinity of the Image neighborhood.
Around 1 a.m., a downed wire caused two breakers to open at the substation, causing 2,723 customers to lose power, Clark Public Utilities spokeswoman Erica Erland said in an email.
About 1,700 customers had their power restored within an hour while everyone else had to wait until about 5:20 a.m., Erland said.
Breakers open and lock, in general, when there is a disruption in a substation system caused by a downed wire, trees on wires or an animal getting into the system.
The public utilities outage map says 4,821 customers recently had their power restored. Erland said there was also a recent, brief outage in the Ridgefield area that affected about 1,500 customers.
“That outage lasted about an hour and no cause was found, so it was likely a tree limb that caused the breaker to open and then fell off the line,” Erland said.
She added that there were reports of high winds around Ridgefield late morning and early afternoon Thursday.
