QUILCENE — A wildfire about 8 miles west of Shelton prompted the shutdown of Bonneville Power Administration lines, causing a temporary loss of electrical power for 3,490 Jefferson County customers.
The Thursday night shutdown affected 1,607 Jefferson County Public Utility District customers.
It also blacked out all Mason County PUD 1 customers, which includes 1,883 customers in Jefferson County living in Brinnon and points south to the Mason County line.
The power was shut down at 7:51 p.m. It was restored in Coyle and Center Valley at 9:19 p.m. and at 10:30 p.m. in Quilcene and Brinnon.
The fire was in the BPA transmission corridor in the Skokomish Valley and burned portions of the BPA transmission lines that serve north of Shelton to Clallam County, said Kristin Masteller, director of public relations for Mason County PUD 1.
It was a ground fire that had moved into the transmission corridor, she said, adding Friday that it had since moved east out from underneath the corridor.
“Right now, there is no danger [of another shutdown],” she said. “We’re not concerned that it’s going to reignite under the transmission site.”
Norma King, spokeswoman for the Department of Natural Resources, said the fire had spread to about 70 acres and was about 65 percent contained by fire lines on three sides as of Saturday afternoon.
On Thursday night, the Jefferson County PUD temporarily routed power through the Chimacum substation to serve Coyle and Center Valley, said Bill Graham, PUD resource manager.
The PUD contacted BPA and received an estimate of when the power would return, and the decision was made to wait until the power returned rather than route Quilcene’s power through Chimacum, Graham said.
Jefferson County PUD called in extra staff to answer phones on the customer service line during the outage.