Bringing to mind the great Capitol Hill Crow Blackout of May 16th, 2010, 34 Capitol Hill customers are without power until around midnight Monday night after a reported crow vs. power lines incident around 7:30 PM. Here’s the report from Amy:
I’m sure this is old news for you, but there was a loud bang about an hour ago, followed by brownouts. It sounded like it was several blocks away from my place (which is on Belmont & Republican). My landlord just stopped by to say that some of our building has power and some tenants don’t. Our landlord said he heard a crow or two landed on a transformer and somehow that was enough to make it explode. If true, that must have been thr unluckiest crow ever.
City Light estimates a return to service by 11:40 PM. RIP, crow.
My thoughts are this is more than crow related, and I hope Seattle City Light investigates a bit before they take the financial hit of replacing a transformer. Yesterday saw significant tree trimming for the Caroline W. apartment project which will apparently begin demolition work again soon:
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2013/04/caroline-w-apartments-move-forward-in-design-process/
Tree branches were removed from the street trees on Boylston and the west side of the property, a large ‘heritage’ chestnut tree. My guess is the tree service companies may have hit/jostled/gotten tons of sawdust, etc. into a transformer when the limbs were removed.
Could be. From my apartment (Belmont & Republican), at the time of the bang, my S.O. thought he saw a flash out the window off to the southwest, which would be a little south of that development, but it’s possible that’s what caused it. It was definitely right nearby – it was LOUD and shook our building, but my friends on other parts of the hill didn’t hear it.
As an aside, I’ll be sad when the trees on that property are gone. There’s a twisty one on the north side of the lot that I’ll especially miss.
Yeah, but we’ll get housing for 45 homeless folks with mental health issues instead.
Sigh. I think the nonprofit that used to occupy that space did a nice job, but I worry that this development will be too much for the neighborhood (at the risk of sounding like a NIMBYish bigot).
Does this mean that there is no more Capitol Hill crow? What will CHS do now?!
He’s in the process of changing the logo to a fried drumstick on a transformer.
Seems like the Capitol Hill crow population is little damaged by this sad incident