In areas of Portland, residents remain without power nearly three days after storm's arrival

Days after high winds knocked out power for tens of thousands in the Portland area, some people are still in the dark.

PORTLAND, Ore. — It’s been nearly three days since a wind storm knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses across Oregon and southwest Washington. During the worst of it, five people were killed when trees came down across roadways. Many buildings and homes saw damage from falling branches or burst pipes.

While power companies had resolved the majority of outages by Thursday, a few stubborn pockets remained — amounting to thousands of customers still in the dark after three days.

Pamela Bell-Medley lives outside of Hillsboro, and her house almost always floods when it rains. She knew when the lights went out Tuesday that they wouldn’t be coming back on anytime soon.

“The power goes out a little after 2 p.m., I hear two big booms, and then I found out a tree had gone down by the golf course,” she recalled.

For Bell-Medley, a power outage is no simple thing. She’s the full-time caregiver for her adult son, Raymond, who has a rare genetic disorder and autism. Staying put in a cold home with no lights wasn’t an option, so she booked a nearby hotel.

“He’s having a rough time staying in a hotel,” Bell-Medley said. “He needs hot water, light. He doesn’t understand this.”

They were among 6,500 or so Portland General Electric customers who remained without power as of Thursday afternoon. PGE has 550 people working to restore power, and they’ve gotten to most of the outages impacting large areas. The smaller ones can sometimes take longer, depending on the area.

Michael Bergmann, who lives in Portland’s Northwest Hills, was still without power on Thursday morning — but he had bigger concerns than electricity.

“Then all of a sudden a huge wind, we could just feel the wind, we had a big Douglas fir and some branches started flying off like spears,” he recounted.

As the wind whipped through on Tuesday, five huge branches ripped off a red cedar in his front yard, landing on the Bergmanns’ roof and puncturing holes in several places.

“My wife described it as almost like the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ where it felt like the house was being lifted up,” Bergmann said. “It almost felt like a mini tornado.”

Fortunately, no one was hurt at the Bergmann house, but it was a close call.

“If someone was at our front door it could have been devastating,” he said.

Still without power, Bergmann and his wife have been keeping warm with their gas fireplace and using camping equipment to cook as they begin working with their insurance company to get their home repaired.

Bell-Medley, on the other hand, is frustrated by how long it’s taking PGE to restore service. She’s worried about how the ordeal is affecting her son.

“He’s basically so confused, he gets extremely stressed,” she said. “I’m trying to make it an adventure for him. I’m not sure how successful I am, but I’m trying.”

When contacted for comment earlier on Thursday, PGE said that crews were working their hardest to restore power for all of their customers, and the number of customers without power gradually dropped throughout the day — down to about 3,600 by 5 p.m. However, PGE indicated that it could be as late as Sunday before all outages are addressed.

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