QuickTake:

A short power outage Wednesday morning affected about 15,000 to 17,000 Springfield Utility Board customers, including the Riverbend hospital, a spokesperson for the utility said. 

A large swath of Springfield residents and businesses lost power for a short time Wednesday morning. 

The Springfield Utility Board posted on its Facebook page about 10:30 a.m. that crews were troubleshooting a large outage in south, east and central Springfield, including the Gateway area.

Zak Gosa-Lewis, a spokesperson for the utility, said about half of its 35,000 customers lost power. He said about 15,000 to 17,000 customers were affected, including larger accounts. Crews restored power within 15 to 20 minutes, he said.

“We had three substations affected that cover about half of our service area customer-wise,” Gosa-Lewis said. 

He said the utility was working to determine what caused the outage and did not yet know if it was related to weather.

“Until we know for sure, we don’t like to guess,” Gosa-Lewis said. 

Joseph Waltasti, a spokesperson for PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, said the hospital lost power around 10:30 a.m. Waltasti said the hospital’s backup generator kicked in immediately, and services at RiverBend were not interrupted. 

“Generators ran for about half an hour until power came back on about 11, and everything seems to be fine,” Waltasti said. “It’s not the first power outage at RiverBend, unfortunately, so we’re pretty prepared for them.”

Springfield Utility Board posted on Facebook two days earlier, Monday, Aug. 25, that a large area was without power due to a transmission outage at its Jasper substation. The utility posted 20 minutes later that power was restored.

Gosa-Lewis said customers can report outages to the utility at any time by calling 541-746-8451.

The Eugene Water & Electric Board power outage map showed an unplanned outage at 10:20 a.m. Wednesday caused about 80 customers to lose power in the Cal Young area.