Good sense of humor: A sign on the front door of Andrew's Pizza and Skylight Theater in Hood River reads, "2020 STRIKES AGAIN," after a natural gas outage which shut many businesses in the area down for hours and days as crews worked to restore service.
Around 5,500 natural gas customers in the area were affected by an outage last week, that extended into the Christmas holiday as crews worked to restore service in the area.
Natural gas service to 5,500 customers affected by last week’s outage was fully restored by NW Natural on Sunday, Dec. 27, according to a press release.
The outage began on the previous Sunday when a vehicle crashed into a Williams NW Pipeline facility which supplies gas to NW Natural, which distributes it to customers. Bingen-White Salmon Police Chief Mike Hepner said the vehicle's driver, 21, admitted to colliding with the facility at a speed of more than 50 miles per hour while intoxicated. He said "the DUI process" is being handled by Washington State Patrol.
NW Natural Corporate Communications Director Melissa Moore said the outage was the largest experienced by the company in 65 years. She said the natural gas industry rarely has outages of any size as most infrastructure is protected and often buried.
Good sense of humor: A sign on the front door of Andrew's Pizza and Skylight Theater in Hood River reads, "2020 STRIKES AGAIN," after a natural gas outage which shut many businesses in the area down for hours and days as crews worked to restore service.
Kirby Neumann-Rea photo
Most service in Bingen and White Salmon was restored by Christmas morning, according to a release.
Moore said the company provided about 2,200 portable electric heaters and 1,100 blankets to customers during the outage as temperatures dipped into the 20s in Parkdale, according to National Weather Service records.
She said the company is “always sorry” when service is disrupted.
“We’re especially sorry because it is the holiday season and it snowed,” she said. “And it’s still 2020.”
On the front door of Andrew’s Pizza and Skylight Theater hung a sign reading “2020: The year that keeps on giving,” as the business was closed for four days with no gas to fire the pizza ovens.
“That was pretty hard,” said owner Andrew McElderry, “but I have all good to say about the boots-on-the-ground NW Natural guys.”
McElderry said he invited the crew to dinner on Saturday, after service resumed. He said the crew was “really gracious” and refused his offer of a discount.
“We were saddled by a lack of communication from the upper level, but their employees on the ground were just great,” he said.
NW Natural also reimbursed eight hotels in Hood River and The Dalles for lodging customers who showed their gas bill to prove they were impacted.
Moore said around 100 technicians worked through the holiday week to resume gas service after Williams NW Pipeline repaired the damaged facility. Moore said each customer’s meter had to be visited twice as technicians purged lines and stopped meters before recharging systems, restarting meters and lighting pilot lights.
Around 5,500 natural gas customers in the area were affected by an outage last week, that extended into the Christmas holiday as crews worked to restore service in the area.
Kirby Neumann-Rea photo
About half of the technicians working were NW Natural employees who volunteered to work, Moore said. The other half were by other utilities through mutual assistance agreements in place for situations like this.
Moore said the company empathized with customers’ concerns about the timing and organization of visits from technicians. She said an “incident command team” dispatched techs every morning under a strategic plan, and she said several factors complicated the effort to resume service.
Chris Creasey, owner of Sixth Street Bistro in Hood River, said about half of his employees were without heat for part of the week. The restaurant closed Monday, Dec. 21 and Creasey waited at the business with wife, Stacie, on Christmas for technicians to visit and turn the gas back on.
“We are forever grateful to the guys from the gas company who worked so hard to get service restored,” Creasey said.
Each visit and action taken by technicians was documented, Moore said. She said the techs employed by other utilities use different electronic equipment for documentation which was incompatible with NW Natural’s system. As a result, the mutual aid techs had to exchange paper documents throughout the process, hampering efficiency.
Moore said the company also followed especially careful protocol when servicing people who were either vulnerable-to or sick with COVID-19.
She said the company received two-to-three-times as many grateful notes and messages as complaints. She said this was especially heartening for techs in the field who “really empathized with customers” during the week.
