More Than 240,000 Oregonians Still Without Power as Ice Encases Portland Region on Valentine’s Day

As dusk fell on day three of Oregon's winter storm, more than 225,000 Portland General Electric customers remained without power and nearly 18,000 Pacific Power customers were as well.

At 5:20 pm Sunday, Clackamas County, where more than 120,000 PGE customers have no electricity, and Marion County, where more than 75,000 PGE customers are in the dark and cold, were the two greatest concentrations of outages.

On its website, Pacific Power said it has 300 employees and contractors working to restore service. PGE, the state's largest electric utility, said it had deployed 700 people.

PGE announced Sunday night that winter storms had downed 4,408 power lines since Thursday, and trees had taken down more.

Most of the Pacific Power outages are in the Willamette Valley.

"Crews are now able to focus on repair and restoration," said Allen Berreth, the utility's vice president of operations, in a statement. "We are still battling the elements, but the thaw in the valley is making the work quicker, and we are losing less ground to new outages popping up. We remain grateful for the support our crews are getting in person and on social media from our customers."

With temperatures forecast to rise above freezing overnight and rain expected Monday, conditions should improve. But the scale of damage means it could take days for some customers to get their power back. PGE said its crews will work around the clock, but "this storm's dynamic conditions make providing accurate estimates a challenge."