Power crews are still out restoring power after nearly 11,000 people were without power earlier today. The heavy, wet snow caused many downed power lines. Pacific Power representatives say about 7300 customers are still without power, but crews will be working overnight to bring it back on. Jan Mitchell is with Pacific Power: “We’re still assessing all the damage. And our crews are hard at work to get everyone restored as quickly and safely as possible. But it could be an extended outage, it could even go into several days for some customers. We are bringing in crews from other areas to assist. Crews from Albany, Walla, Walla, Grants Pass, Pendleton, all coming in to assist the crews that are already there.” Again 7300 people remain without power at this hour. To check when the power is expected to be back on, you can call 1-877-508-5088. You can also check www.pacificpower.net.

Jeff Beaman of Central Electric Co-Op says 10,000 customers were affected at the peak of the outage, which came around 5am. There are about 5000 still without power throughout their 5300 square mile system. Crews are working to re-establish these scattered outages, but it will take time to get to them all. Beaman is not estimating how long it will take CEC to get all power restored.