Thousands remain without power in Portland as utility says most will be restored by Friday

PORTLAND — More than 63,000 homes and businesses were still without power in the Portland area Thursday morning as many customers were nearing a full week without electricity.

The majority of the outages were in Clackamas County where just over 50,000 customers had no electricity as of 6 a.m, according to Portland General Electric. Multnomah County had another 13,600 outages. In Marion County, at least 32,000 customers were still in the dark. Some of those outages were first reported last Friday.

On Wednesday, the utility unveiled a new map where customers can track repair crews in real time and Larry Bekkedahl, a PGE vice president, said utility officials expect 90% of their customers who were without power to have their electricity restored by Friday night.

“For the remaining 10%, due to the significant damage and access challenges, we expect that it will take several more days,” Bekkedahl said in a statement.

All the substations that had been knocked offline by the powerful winter storm that walloped the region last weekend had been restored, the utility reported, but more than 6,400 individual wires were still in need of repair. More than 3,000 people were working to restore service, PGE said.

A handful of Portland-area school districts have announced they won’t hold virtual classes Thursday as some who have had power restored continue to suffer from internet outages. Comcast said Wednesday that around 76,000 customers had no service and some could be waiting a week or more to get back on the internet.

Rain is expected to return to the Portland area Thursday, continuing through the weekend, but temperatures are expected to remain well above freezing and there is no snow or freezing rain forecast for the Willamette Valley’s lowest elevations.