'Got to pace yourself': Clark County utility workers hold the line amid heat wave

Utility workers in Southwest Washington are holding the line amid a record-breaking heat wave.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Utility workers in Southwest Washington are holding the line amid a record-breaking heat wave.

Though Clark Public Utilities told KOIN 6 News they've managed to mostly avoid seeing too many heat-related outages the past few days, some challenges have come up.

In particular, the Clark County District Court said on its website that both the administrative and probation offices closed on Tuesday due to a power outage. As originally reported by The Columbian, 1,500 people in Vancouver were without power at one point. However, by the evening, Clark Public Utilities website said there were no more active outages.

The reason Clark Public Utilities crews haven't encountered as many heat-related outages the past few days compared to Portland is partially because it's a much smaller area to cover. But it's also because of good planning.

"Electricity doesn't care if it's hot or cold. It's going to do what it does," said Clark Public Utilities Night Shift Foreman Larry Jones.

When there's extreme weather, people working the lines are expected to show up for their job no matter the conditions.

"You got to pace yourself a little bit, you can't just go out there and work 100%," said Jones, who has worked in the trade for over 30 years.

It's a tough job, even in mild conditions. But whether power lines are suspended in the air or buried underground, there's no escape from soaring temperatures in this line of work.

"It's the load from everybody's air conditioners that are going," Jones said. "In addition to that, you have the fact that the equipment can't cool down like it can in the winter. So the equipment has the same load in the summer as it does in the winter and the equipment fails because it can't cool down."

Thankfully, the utility said they've had very few heat-related outages during this heat wave.

"We're really well prepared for this kind of weather," said Clark Public Utilities Lineman Canaan Stenek. "We have a really strong system here where the system is overbuilt, where we can provide for whether the heat gets really hot or really cold."

Safety is of utmost importance for workers, which is why they're required to take a 15-minute break every hour when it's above 100 degrees.

"You've got to hold back a little bit otherwise you're going to get heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and other things you need to worry about when it gets hot," Jones said.

A boon to crews working in this heat is friendly neighbors.

"When your power is out, just a little bit of patience goes a long way," Stenek said. "We usually have really nice customers bringing us water. It's hot for us, it might be cold for us, we're trying to get things working as fast as possible."