This morning at 11:17 am Portland Fire & Rescue responded to the report of a fire in a transient camp.  When firefighters arrived they found that the fire had damaged a guy-wire that braced a pole supporting high voltage power lines.  The guy-wire snapped and the pole fell taking the lines and several other poles down with it.  This caused a local power outage.  No one was found in the transient camp when firefighters arrived.

The power lines fell on to several cars, causing damage to the vehicles and making it impossible for people to access their cars until the lines could be de-energized.  The damage caused the power lines to hang low over the railroad tracks making it impossible for trains to pass.  In addition to those issues, a large amount of transformer fluid leaked when the poles fell.

PP&L was called to ameliorate the power issue and Portland's HazMat team was called to facilitate mitigation of the transformer fluid leak.  When fire units cleared the PP&L was working to fix the electrical issue and rail traffic was still unable to pass.  No injuries were reported in association with this incident.

Contact info, for media use only:
Lt. Damon Simmons (503) 940-6003