Power pole fire causes Monday outage

EPHRATA — At about 8 a.m. Monday, Grant County Public Utility District reported a large power outage just south of Ephrata which had been caused by a power pole fire.

Christine Pratt, Public Information Officer for Grant PUD said the outage affected about 1,000 customers initially.

Roughly an hour after the first announcement, the PUD reported that the cause for the outage was due to a bird's nest that had caught fire and caused another fire around the base of a light pole near Dodson Road and Road 9.8 West. The bird nest as a cause for the fire was later ruled out. The PUD said power had been restored to all but eight customers soon after the outage began.

Pratt said PUD staff were able to restore power quickly by rerouting power to those customers through other utility lines.

Pratt said a cause for the fire had not been identified.

As of 2:30 p.m. Monday, crews were still working on replacing the pole. Pratt said restoration of power to the eight customers and the replacement of the pole was expected by about 3:30 p.m.

Grant County Fire District 13 was on the scene, along with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office and PUD personnel.

GCSO posted to their Facebook around the same time asking citizens to go to the Grant PUD page for outage info and to not call 911 when a power outage occurs. The post noted that the Basin may see some power outages this week due to the heat wave.

The PUD’s page states to report power outages call: (800) 216-5226.

Pratt noted that while an overload on the power grid is not a concern in Grant County, they always recommend customers do anything they can during the day to preserve electricity.

“Anytime you can preserve, do (it),” said Pratt.

Rebecca Pettingill may be reached at rpettingill@columbiabasinherald.com.