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Nearly 10,000 customers across North Capitol Hill, North Broadway, and along the Hill’s eastern 23rd Ave edge were without power Monday afternoon. Seattle City Light was investigating the outage but reports of wires down along leafy Lakeview Blvd E appear to have been the culprit.
The outage was first reported just before 3 PM. City Light said it was working to restore the outage with an estimated restoration time of 6 PM
911 callers reported an exploded transformer and wires down and sparking in the 1300 block of Lakeview Blvd E. Seattle Fire was called to the scene to take care of any immediate danger before City Light crews could begin work on repairs.
UPDATE 4:35 PM: The outage totals have been knocked in half with a core area still without power between I-5 and Broadway.
UPDATE x2: City Light reported the outage repairs completed just after 10 PM.
The cause of the wire damage was attributed to a “large downed tree.”
Many North Broadway businesses announced they were closed for the night Monday afternoon.
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Estimated restoration time just revised to 10:05 pm……
These outages always seem to border on 13th. I’m on 14th and have never been affected in four years. Is 13th unlucky or something?
My understanding is that the northern portion of the neighborhood is still on an above ground grid where it’s easy for wind and falling tree branches to damage wires that then knock all of the power out. The rest of us are fortunate to be on a power grid located safely below ground.
Don’t count yourself as invincible just yet…. Our street was all woken in the wee hours of one night by quite a boom. As we all staggered out to see WTF, we could see smoke rising from the manhole covers in the street… Fire came, city light came… something pretty serious happened in a vault down there. That was a good 8-10 years ago, and I don’t think it’s ever been fixed.
why are there so many power lines above ground on the southern part then?
Your turn is probably coming! I have lived on 10th for 29 years, and a power outage used to be an extreme rarity. Now we’ve had probably half a dozen in the last two years. Infrastructure is getting old, and the city is not checking city trees for potential damage as much as they used to do.