Chelan PUD Handles Numerous Outages In Same Area

The electricity is back on for more than 3,000 Chelan PUD customers who lost power in the string of outages this week. 

The outages all occurred in an area between Peshastin and Plain between Tuesday and Thursday. 

PUD spokesperson Neil Neroutsos says the outage in Peshastin involved wildlife. 

"We had a bird that was dropping some brush from their nest onto one of our lines, and we had a small fire on a pole, and we were able to restore power," said Neroutsos. 

The three outages were not related, although they all took place within a 15-mile radius in a relatively short period of time. 

Neroutsos says wildlife can be responsible for outages even though the PUD has safeguards in place. 

"In terms of animals, we put guards on certain pieces of equipment so they don't get into some of the equipment that is sensitive," Neroutsos said. "We also put what we call line diversions on some of our lines so birds have better visibility of seeing lines, so they don't fly into them" 

The three outages: 

• Tuesday - 2,800 customers in the areas of Leavenworth and Plain. 
• Late Wednesday - 400 customers in the area of Peshastin.  
• Overnight Thursday morning - 830 customers in the area of the Chumstick Hwy. to Plain 

Chelan County PUD customers can track power outages by accessing a special map online at outages.chelanpud.org. 

Separately, the PUD is warning customers about a phone scam

Scammers typically claim that the customer's bill is past due and their power will be cut off if they don’t make an immediate payment. Chelan PUD advises customers to hang up when such a call is received, and report it to (509) 663-8121