Update 3:23PM: City Light reports that all power is restored, making it a 7 hour outage
UPDATE 1:13PM: Traffic lights are coming back on on 15th Ave E. No official word if that marks the end of the outage though. Anyone still in the dark out there?
Kinda crazy order of updates on this post. Scroll down for more updates from earlier today.
UPDATE 9:35 AM: Don’t have all the details and can’t head over there right now but activity seems to center around the Group Health at Thomas and 15th Ave E. City Light crews are at work on the power system there and there’s an unfortunate 43 metro bus involved. More when we put the pieces together. Traffic is being blocked in the area off and on so you should plan to avoid.
Original Report:
A section of Capitol Hill and surrounding neighborhoods are without power again this morning just one day after a blackout left parts of the Hill from Pike/Pine to I5 and parts of First Hill and the Central District without electricity. Monday’s blackout was blamed on a bad cable. Today’s cause is a downed wire, City Light reports.
Here’s the report from City Light:
Seattle City Light is responding to an outage in the First Hill and Capitol Hill neighborhoods. The outage was first reported at 8:00 a.m. There are an estimated 3,531 customers without electricity. The cause of the outage is due to a down wire.
The general boundaries of the outage area are: East Mercer Street on the north; East Spring Street on the south; from I-5 on the west to 22nd Avenue East on the east.
We’ve mapped the outages. Blue is Monday, Red, today.
View 12/21 Cap Hill Power Outage in a larger map
I live in an area covered by both the blue and the red squares, but my power hasn’t gone out at all. However, on Monday night my cable and internet were out the entire time everyone else was without power.
I live on 17th a couple of blocks in from Thomas. Apparently a high voltage wire came down and at least earlier this morning was still live. Hence the cordoning off of the area. Super Kudos to the police and fire department because they were there first and got the situation well in hand. A neighbor called City Light right after the power went out and they apparently didn’t know it had happened. The fire department got things cordoned off, the police dealt with traffic, and kept all the unaware otherwise impatient folks at bay. they initially let one or two buses through, but I guess they must’ve decided it was too dangerous. Again, it was a live wire just down on the sidewalk. Since my house is electric I fled to stumptown for coffee and chocolate apricot cookie. Hopefully, city light will be able to get it sorted before day’s end. Back to my cookie.
Interesting in this adventure: no advisories on Metro site about bus delays or conditions in and around the area. At least on my check.
Justin, thanks for the diligent reporting on this.
I’m at 19th and Denny or so (the 19th Ave Lofts), and have not had any power outage at all so far. FWIW.
Thanks.
Outage zones often have patches where service is maintained because of how the system is configured. It’s a big patchwork network. If you are lucky enough to be on the edge of one grid, you might be in the light while your neighbor is in the dark.
Agreed! As soon as I got to a wifi spot the FIRST place I went was to the Cap Hill Blog. Then I thought I’d check out City Light’s web page.
My power didn’t go out yesterday, but it’s been off twice already today. The good thing is that it wasn’t out for very long.
Also agreed. I live in the affected area, but have been at work since 7am so no idea if I have power or not, but I greatly appreciate all of Justin’s hard work to keep us informed about what’s going on in the neighborhood.
Still no power at 17th and John, but a house across the street has power.
BTW, unfortunately this site does not load properly on my wifi enabled blackberry browser. Just so you know.
And I second (third?) the props to Justin–thanks for the timely updates!
Thanks for the thanks but I hope everybody realizes I can’t do all of this on my own and lots of people are pitching in time and information to make it work.
But, yeah, thanks!!
So … no problems at all on my street.
The giant snow storms was much more interesting and involved every living thing – including all the people – for days.
Now, I feed nostalgic. Pix of sleds are great from last year, tons of fun, even in the night. I have a large plastic tub – very sturdy – with handle holes. Worked perfectly, better that the sled from when I was a kid.
Merry to all, and to all a good New Year.
(buy ONLY Bliss soap in 2010. Take the pledge, spend $$$$ on the Hill, local.)