By Abby Sewell
Molalla Pioneer
An early-morning wind storm cut off power to thousands of Molalla-area homes this morning.
As of 9:30 a.m. about 3,000 Portland General Electric customers in and around Molalla were without electricity, including the Molalla Pioneer office, down from 4,000 earlier in the morning. By mid-afternoon, about 1,500 remained in the dark.
The day’s damages were nowhere near as severe as the wind storm last December that knocked out power for about 250,000 PGE customers, however.
“It’s autumn in Oregon and this sort of thing happens,” PGE spokesperson Steve Corson said. “… Wind is going to blow, rain is going to fall, and that’s going to affect tree limbs and power lines and create incidents like these.”
PGE crews were working throughout the day to reroute and restore power.
According to Molalla Fire Department spokesperson Denise Everhart, Molalla firefighters responded to 12 calls for downed wires, two residential fire alarms, and two commercial fire alarms between 4:40 a.m. and 1:15 p.m.
One man was transported to Sunnyside Keizer hospital with a leg injury after falling from his roof on Toliver Road shortly before 9 a.m., and a house on Wilhoit Road, south of Molalla, suffered damages from a fir tree crashing onto its roof at about 7 a.m.
MFD personnel said no one was home when the tree fell. The incident caused “significant damages,” MFD Lt. Mike Penunuri said, although he was not able to give a dollar amount.
Colton Fire Department Chief Gary Anderson said that to his knowledge, there was no injury or major damage to homes in Colton due to the storm, although he also reported seeing a large number of downed trees and power lines.
The National Weather Service’s Portland office spokesperson Paul Tolleson said wind speeds were reported to be between 40 and 50 miles per hour throughout the Willamette Valley. He had no specific reading for the Molalla area.
To report downed power lines, call PGE at 503-464-7777 or 1-800-544-1795.
For the full story, see Wednesday’s print edition of the Molalla Pioneer.
We’re glad you are back up and running after your power was down!