PRESORTED STANDARD
U.S. Postage Paid
Vernonia, OR 97064
Permit No. 37
Vol. 21, No. 24
“Voice of the Upper Nehalem River Valley”
Windstorm does major damage
to WOEC lines, substations
‘Tis the Season
By W. Marc Farmer, General Man-
ager, West Oregon Electric Coop-
erative
Top Three Ranking Storm
An old adage says “If you have a lemon, make lemonade!” This isn’t a lemon tree, but a
Banks homeowner shares the idea by moving Christmas decorations to the butt of a tree
knocked down by last week’s wind storm.
Spruce Run closed by
major storm damage
The Oregon Department of
Forestry has announced that
Clatsop State Forest’s Henry
Rierson Spruce Run Camp-
ground along the Nehalem Riv-
er will be closed until March 1
to make storm-related repairs.
The popular campground
about five miles off Highway 26
at Elsie suffered significant
wind-storm damage.
For more information, con-
tact Larry Sprouse at the ODF
Astoria District Office 503-325-
5451.
Holiday closure for
Transfer Station
The Vernonia Transfer
Station will be closed on De-
cember 23 for the Christmas
Holiday. Regular dates and
hours will resume in January.
December 21, 2006
Dozens of Vernonia youth volunteered their services after the
windstorm-caused power outages created a community-wide
emergency. Pictured above are students unloading cots to
be used in the Red Cross emergency shelter. Among the
many tasks they helped with, students also went door-to-
door with over 1,700 information flyers for residents who
were impacted by the storm.
The December 14, 2006,
storm will go down in history as
one of the three worst wind
storms in West Oregon Electric
Cooperative history. The dam-
age, widespread and severe,
hit hard in all five of the coun-
ties we serve. Poles, line, and
trees all came down during the
wind and rains that continuous-
ly pounded our service territory
for over 12 hours. While we
had our trucks stocked and fu-
eled, crews ready to go, and
staff prepared, Mother Nature
reminded us who is in control.
It literally did start with a
bang at 2:07 p.m. on Hwy 202,
as the first tree came through
the line and blew the fuses on
the transformer. Necanicum
Substation went down next, as
trees took out the line feeding
power to our substation from
PP&L. From there it went
downhill in a hurry. Mist and
Chapman areas were next,
with the Mist Substation going
out at 3:35 p.m. and the Chap-
man Substation going out at
3:45 p.m.
The world faded to black at
4:45 p.m., when the transmis-
sion line from BPA, feeding our
main substation in Timber, was
lost. This also took out power
feeding the Vernonia Substa-
tion at the same time as Ver-
nonia is fed power from the
Timber Substation. Metering
points where we receive power
from PGE starting going dark,
as well, as they experienced
the full wrath of the storm.
At its peak, West Oregon EC
had 100 percent of our mem-
bers without power and it was
reported that everything from
185th to the coast and the en-
tire coast north of Tillamook
was dark.
At 10:30 p.m. we had to call
in our crews as their very lives
were in danger from falling
trees and debris. Two of our
Linemen were hit, one in the
shoulder, another in the neck
and shoulder as they were cut-
ting trees out of the way.
Clatskanie PUD had two trucks
smashed by a tree and a
snapped power pole. The driv-
er of one of the trucks required
22 stitches when the tree fell
into his side of the truck.
Trees were falling into the
roads faster than my crew
could cut them. They literally
had to cut their way back to the
office in Vernonia. Four of my
Linemen couldn’t make it back
as the trees caused roads to be
closed and they had to spend
the night in the trucks. All
through the night the Engineer-
ing and Operations Manager
and I were contacting other util-
ities to see how they were fair-
ing. The devastation was
everywhere. The entire coast
was under siege and it spread
inland and down the Columbia
Gorge. When morning came,
we had 99 percent of our mem-
bers without power and a se-
verely damaged service area.
As our crews went through
normal procedures for restor-
ing power – first to transmis-
sion lines, then to substations,
followed by the major feeder
lines, then to tap lines, and fi-
nally to individual services – we
encountered our first major
problem. With all of our neigh-
boring utilities having been hit
by the storm just as hard or
harder than us, we realized that
getting the transmission lines
repaired on our side of the sub-
stations didn’t get us started,
as power was not available
from the other side.
Please see Power
of the People, Page 12