Oregon Public Broadcasting

Tens of thousands of people in Western Oregon are making do without power today, but utility crews are out in force trying to get lights and heat back on.

The weekend's ice and snow brought down ice and snow from Clark County to Salem.  

Steve Corson with PGE says every available crew is working, along with contractors. 

Steve Corson: "I mean we've had snow, we've had ice, we've had more snow. And that eventually takes its toll on tree limbs and also on the equipment itself." 

Corson says a lot of what crews are doing involves re-routing power through whatever transmission lines are available. That's not always possible, especially in rural areas, and in those cases crews manually restring the lines.

So far, about 55,000 people in PGE's service area don't have electricity.

Worst hit areas include Salem, West Portland, Beaverton, and Gresham, with additional small outages all over the metro area.

Pacific Power is trying to restore service to sixty-six hundred households.

Clark County's public utilities are working on restoring power to about 200 customers.

As always, utilities encourage you to stay away from downed lines, but please do call in to report them when you see them.