Portland area residents take ‘wait and freeze’ approach to power outages

Graham Nash and his wife lost power to their home near Forest Heights around 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

More than a day later, he was still waiting for Portland General Electric to restore it, and many others in the Portland area were shivering in their homes, too. As of Sunday evening, PGE’s outage map showed 96,000 customers without power. An additional 10,000 Pacific Power customers were still without electricity statewide on Sunday, with a portion of those in the Portland area.

Nash has a gas stove and was able to heat up food. But without power he and his wife were unable to open their garage door and drive to a hotel. Navigating the slick hills near the couple’s home would be challenging anyway, and public transit is limited in the area. He used his iPad to charge his phone, but knew he’d be out of battery within a day.

“You just don’t realize how much you depend on electricity to keep going in life now,” he said.

Many others in the Portland area experienced the same creeping realization Sunday.

Kathy Wilber lost power at her Raleigh Hills apartment around noon on Saturday and does not have a gas or wood fireplace to use as a backup. She does not own an all-wheel-drive vehicle so she was staying home, she said. “It’s 50 degrees in here now,” Wilber wrote on Facebook Sunday afternoon. “I’m hopeful the power comes back on soon.”

Lisa Neher said she was now grateful for a decision that she regretted earlier in the year — a gas stove. Gas stoves have drawn concern because they release air pollutants.

Neher, her husband and her mother were bundled up in winter clothes inside their Southwest Portland home, and could see their breath inside. But the gas stovetop came in handy as they could cook and heat water for hot water bottles.

She said they were prepared with emergency supplies of food and water, but they were keeping a close eye on two new kittens they just adopted, who were on edge amid the wind and snow.

She noted that a friend had invited them to stay at their house in Wilsonville, but they decided to stay put because they weren’t able to view road conditions on TripCheck. The Oregon Department of Transportation noted during a press conference Sunday morning that some of its cameras were not working.

“We understand that hospitals and warming centers and other infrastructure need to take priority,” Neher wrote in an email. “But this is the longest I’ve ever been out of power since moving to Portland six years ago, and it is wearing on us physically, emotionally and mentally to have no clue how long we have to endure this or how much colder our house is going to get,” she said.

Roger Gray, a PGE customer in Lake Oswego, is drawing power from a back-up generator but said he felt frustrated that PGE hadn’t given him or his neighbors more information about the cause of the outage more than 24 hours ago or the timeline for the restoration of power. Gray, who works in the utility industry, said outages are bound to happen during extreme weather events and the abundance of large, inadequately maintained trees in many neighborhoods heightens the risk of downed lines.

But utility companies could do more to prepare their technology to meet customers’ needs during emergencies, so that people do not hit roadblocks when attempting to report or check the status of outages, as happened to many PGE customers this time, Gray said. “I’ve worked for six different utilities but not being able to get your website working so people can get information” is a problem that should be fixable, Gray said.

John Farmer, a PGE spokesperson, said on Sunday morning that the company does year-round maintenance to cut down on outages, such as trimming trees and branches near power lines. The utility company is also implementing new technology to allow crews to better pinpoint the location and cause of an outage.

Yet he acknowledged there are gaps.

“These big wind events that would normally be once in a decade, once in a generation, are becoming more frequent,” he said, noting increased winter storms and summer wildfires. “We’re all in this new territory together.”

The outages caused some alarm for people with medical devices.

For Judy Irish, the power outage meant she lost heat and the ability to use the airway pressure mask — or CPAP machine — she uses to sleep due to what she described as “severe sleep apnea.”

“My house was in the low 40s this morning,” Irish wrote on Facebook, in response to a query from The Oregonian/OregonLive about how people were coping without power. “Didn’t get much sleep since I couldn’t use my CPAP machine. Hope power is restored ASAP.”

Irish said her younger brother came to her rescue with a generator, power cords, blankets, snacks and electric and propane heaters, although the propane heater already ran out of fuel.

Other strategies that people reported using in Facebook posts included firing up gas fireplaces, huddling beneath blankets, putting food from their non-operating freezers and refrigerators outside in an attempt to prevent spoilage and opening exterior doors as little as possible.

People should not use generators or kerosene heaters indoors, however. PGE said that without proper ventilation, they can cause carbon monoxide poisoning. Portland Fire & Rescue responded to several reports of carbon monoxide poisoning on Sunday.

People with young children and pets were also anxious about the ongoing outages.

Tigard resident Amber Miller said her power went out around 1 p.m. Saturday. It left her, her two young children and their pets — four cats and a tortoise — sitting in a 40-degree home and with no idea of when the power would return.

Miller said the uncertainty has been scary. Her husband, an ODOT employee, has been working 12-hour shifts to clear roads. She said they were able to get some food from family members, and they temporarily escaped to her grandmother’s house, but she’s worried about the next few days.

“Our cats are super cold; I’m worried about our tortoise who doesn’t have his heating lamps,” Miller said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “I know so many people are without (power). It’s been a terrible weekend with the cold.”

Some people decided to seek shelter in area hotels, after lengthy power outages caused temperatures inside their homes to dip to dangerous levels. By Sunday afternoon, hotel booking websites showed few rooms still available for Sunday night in the suburbs around Portland and although more accommodations remained available in central Portland, some downtown hotels reported only a handful of rooms left.

The frustration of not knowing when their power will return was starting to wear on many residents as the light faded Sunday afternoon.

Missy Tate got a ride home from her shift at the Friendly House emergency warming shelter on Saturday evening. As she approached her apartment off Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, streetlights were dead and the road was too slippery to drive up the hill into her complex. She made her way on foot, where she found her roommate napping in the dark.

Tate collected camping lanterns and all the candles she could find, and lit them all. They produced a bit of heat, but she said the “cacophony of scents” was overwhelming. She ate a dinner of canned tuna and bread and chatted with her roommate. The temperature in the apartment was about 45 degrees.

On Sunday afternoon, she was still waiting for an update from PGE. If not for her roommate and dog at home, she said, she would have just stayed at the warming shelter where she works.

“I’m hoping it won’t be too much longer,” Tate wrote in an email. “Because the canned tuna supply is already starting to run low.”

—Jayati Ramakrishnan; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com

—Hillary Borrud; hborrud@oregonian.com