Grant PUD crews fix Cascade Valley outages
A jumper wire on a power pole serving the Cascade Valley neighborhood was the apparent cause of multiple power outages earlier this month.
R. HANS MILLER/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
MOSES LAKE — Grant County PUD crews appear to have found the underlying problem that caused multiple outages in Cascade Valley from June 3 to last weekend.
Christine Pratt, PUD public affairs officer, said in a statement that the culprit tentatively has been identified as a jumper wire on one of the power poles in the area.
“A jumper is a wire that connects two wire sections,” Pratt wrote. “Our crews think the jumper was faulty and replaced it.”
A customer reported seeing sparks from what turned out to be the jumper wire, and that led PUD crews to the suspected source of the problem. Along with replacing the jumper, PUD crews installed additional monitoring equipment to find and isolate any further problems, Pratt said.
That followed more than a week of persistent electrical outages in the Cascade Valley neighborhood, Pratt said.
“Since June 3, Grant PUD crews have responded to four outages affecting some or all of the 575 customers served by one of the lines that feed electricity into the Cascade Valley. Some customers may have experienced more than four outages, as crews often have to cut power for short periods while they’re working on a repair,” Pratt said.
Customers, writing on the PUD social media, reported that electricity in Cascade Valley would go out when it rained.
“The cause of the repeated outages was hard to find,” Pratt wrote. “Crews attempted several repairs that restored power temporarily, but ultimately failed.”