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A safety reminder from the Brookings Police Department.

UPDATE, 7:00 p.m.:

Power has been restored. Here's the Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative's final word on the ordeal:

The southern portion of CCEC’s service territory lost power for about 3.5 hours this afternoon...So what happened?

There are normally 2 transmission lines that feed CCEC from the BPA substation north of Gold Beach. This is the area where BPA transmission lines end and CCEC’s begin. One of those lines was out of service for maintenance. The remaining line had an insulator failure which created a “ground fault”. You can see the wire on the ground in the photos.

Once the problem was identified we began the process of routing power around the problem area and reenergizing the CCEC substations and your homes and businesses.

UPDATE, 5:22 p.m.:

BPA spokesperson David Wilson told the Outpost that the outage incident occured due to a downed line three miles from Nesika Beach, north of Gold Beach.

UPDATE, 4:45 p.m.:

Good news! Bonneville Power Administration spokesperson David Wilson told the Outpost mintues ago that power could be resupplied to the area within 30 to 45 minutes if all goes according to plan.

Wilson said that there was only one BPA line supplying power to the region at the time of the outage.

Usually there are two lines, but one has been inactive due to an ongoing breaker replacement.

Wilson said the one working line supplying power to Oregon's southern coast was likely downed by a tree due to the weather.

The plan, he says, is to switch the power back to the line that was udner maintinance. As long as that line also hasn't also been damaged, the power should come back on immeidately.

"We have maintenance crews on standby and we sent somebody out to the area," Wilson said. "They have been on site for about 15 to 20 minutes and are trying to see if they can restore power to line one from the breaker project. If we can move it to line one, we should be okay." 

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UPDATE, 4:15 p.m.:

The Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative reports that cause of the outage is still unknown.

"The cause of the transmission line fault has not yet been identified," the company wrote on Facebook. "We hope to know more within the next 1 1/2 hours."

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UPDATE, 4:00 p.m.:

Nearly 3,000 customers are now listed as not having power in the Brookings area and more than 500 are without power in Gold Beach.

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UPDATE, 3:40 p.m.:

A spokesperson with the Bonneville Power Administration just relayed to the Outpost that the outage may have started in the Gold Beach area around 2:48 p.m., when "30 megawatts of load" were lost due to wind and rain in the area.

"We have operation crews on the way," the BPA spokesperson said.

The Outpost is waiting for a return call for the more technical details of the malfunctioning power source.

2,546 are now listed as not having power in Brookings and 362 are without power in Gold Beach.

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UPDATE, 3:20 p.m.:

The number of those affected by the outage continues to rise. 

2,537 customers are now listed as affected in the Brookings area, and 357 customers are affected in Gold Beach.

According to the latest infomation, Coos-Curry Electric and Bonneville Power Administration crews crews are still attempting to locate the "transmission line fault."

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UPDATE, 3:05 p.m.:

Coos-Curry Electric crews are attemtpting to locate the cause of the outage.

The company says it will likely take two hours to identify the problem.

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A massive power outage has cut electricity to more than 2,700 customers along Oregon's southern coast.

According to the Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative outages map, 2,433 customers are currently without power in Brookings and 315 custoers are without power in Gold Beach.

"CCEC has lost transmission service from Gold Beach south," the company stated on its Facebook page minutes ago.

The cause of the Outage is still unknown at this time. We will update when more infomration is avialable.

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