A bird that entered a Umatilla Electric substation south of Hermiston touched off a two-hour outage Easter Sunday that knocked out power to 1,816 meters.
The outage on Transformer No. 2 at the Feedville Substation began when a 115-kilovolt circuit switcher opened at about 2:40 p.m. A bird on the low-side surge arrestors of the substation power transformer had caused the phases to flashover to ground.
A UEC line crew removed the surge arrestors and restored service at about 4:38 p.m.
The outage affected the southwest portion of Hermiston, including the Walmart Distribution Center, affecting both Umatilla Electric and Hermiston Energy Services customers.
