During the months of June and July, UEC Line Equipment Operators and contractor Trees LLC were busy removing more than 250 danger trees in the eastern part of Umatilla Electric’s service territory.
Surrounded by trees and mountainous terrain, the eastern part of UEC’s service territory serves as the area at highest risk of wildfires. Danger trees are dead or dying trees that are at risk of falling from outside UEC’s right of way and are capable of contacting a powerline if they do.
A tree contact with a powerline not only has the potential to cause an outage that affects members, but also has the possibility of sparking a fire.
“Wildfire mitigation is always a high priority at UEC, and the removal of danger trees is one way to support this effort,” says Dusty Grogan, UEC Superintendent of Operations.
“I’m very happy with the removal numbers as it clears the hazards near our lines and decreases the risk of wildfire,” he said. “In the fall after the fire restrictions are lifted, we plan to finish removing more danger trees from where we left off and will continue to identify areas to perform removals in the future.”
