PORTLAND — Tens of thousands of people remained without power Tuesday in the Portland, Oregon, area as crews raced to restore electricity after an icy weekend winter storm downed more than 5,000 power lines.
Portland General Electric’s map of power outages listed about 200,000 customers without electricity, while Pacific Power listed about 20,000 in Salem and the Portland area.
A weekend weather system brought heavy snow across the Pacific Northwest, with Seattle seeing more than a foot of snow Saturday through Monday. But it was northwest Oregon that saw the most severe effects as ice and snow downed trees, collapsed roofs and made driving dangerous.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency for the greater Portland region and more than 2,500 workers were in the field trying to restore electricity. Portland General Electric said it had turned the lights back on for about 300,000 customers but sporadic outages kept occurring.
“Our crews are really in an ongoing repair situation and it’s going to take some time go get everybody back on,” PGE spokesman Steve Corson told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “It’s still going to take a long time, so we could have people who are out for many days yet.”
More than 200 miles of transmission lines need repairs, Corson said, and PGE is prioritizing those fixes, even as it works on repairing downed lines elsewhere.
In Gladstone, Oregon, southeast of Portland, autoritie said six adults appear to have been poisoned by carbon monoxide due to a generator inside the house they were in. The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office says four people were sent to the hospital via ambulance while two others were treated at the scene.
The school district in Portland cancelled online classes for Tuesday because so many people lacked internet access. Comcast said 125,000 customers in Oregon and southwest Washington were without internet service Tuesday morning, the “vast majority” because they don’t have electricity.
In Troutdale, Oregon, snow and ice caused a section of a roof to collapse into a grocery store Sunday afternoon. Authorities said one minor injury was reported.
Flooding was also a concern in western Washington as milder Pacific air arrived, with snow melting and storm drains clogged.
While seasonal temperatures had returned to the Puget Sound area, the Cascade Mountains were seeing blizzard conditoins. Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass, the main east-west route across the state, was closed Tuesday. In the last two days 36 inches of snow had fallen and forecasters said more was expected.
