About 1,300 Umatilla Electric customers in and around Irrigon lost power early Sunday during the coldest night of the year when a piece of equipment known as a bump sleeve failed.
The sleeves, also called a splice, are steel structures a few inches long that hold two ends of a power line together. They are often compared to toy finger traps because of the way they grip two wires together.
The extremely cold weather, reported at minus 6, could have been a contributing factor when the apart. Power lines contract and tighten in frigid temperatures.
Crew made the necessary repairs, but because of extreme cold and heavy power usage on the line, crews restored power in sections rather than all at once. Most customers were back on line by 6:45 a.m.
In addition, an early Saturday outage knocked out power to 293 members in the Paterson Ferry Road area for a couple of hours when a tree fell through line.
