Oregon Public Broadcasting

Portland General Electric utility crews have restored power to almost everyone that lost it during the past few weeks of stormy weather. But as Pete Springer reports, the last hundred or so customers in Government Camp and Rhododendron are the hardest.

A hundred or so customers near Mt Hood have been without power since last week.

PGE spoweswoman Elaina Medina says utility crews are having to plow side roads to reach some customers in the Rhododendron area.

Elaina Medina: “But we’re also using a team of snowcats to go in and repair these, um, customers sort of one by one.  There are a lot of summer cabins up there and really hard to reach areas.”

Medina says most of the cabins without power are unoccupied this time of year and crews will be working all week to restore power to them.

Heavy ice and snow last week pulled down utility lines that knocked out power to around 70,000 of PGE's 800 thousand  customers.

PGE says they’ve restored power to everyone except those Mt. Hood customers at this point.