Downtown Seattle has power again, after a large outage that began just after 11:30 a.m. Several buildings were without power, and traffic signals were not functioning in Seattle’s core.
Seattle City Light initially estimated power would be out for a few hours, but then got it all restored in about an hour.
Seattle firefighters responded to at least eight calls for elevator rescues, according to the online dispatch page.
The city’s transportation department tweeted this map of the outage area:
About 60 percent of the traffic signals downtown were affected, according to Sound Transit.
ST Express routes 512, 522, 545, 554, 577/578, and 590/594 were delayed, according to Sound Transit. Link light rail was temporarily interrupted.
Connie McDougall, of Seattle City Light, said there was an equipment failure at the Massachusetts Street substation downtown.
Ironically, the Seattle City Light offices in the Seattle Municipal Tower also lost power.
“We have no power here, so we’re tweeting off our telephones,” McDougall said around noon.
Barbara Serrano, a prosecutor with the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, was writing an email at her desk on the 18th floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower when “all of a sudden, everything went out. The office got dark, the hallways got dark.”
She walked down 18 flights of stairs and headed to lunch in the International District with five other prosecutors.
“We can’t do any work right now,” Serrano said. “The phones work, but the computers don’t. And attorneys are pretty much helpless without their computers.”
She was happy to leave early for lunch, but not happy that she wasn’t able to finish her work.
Was there anything about the blackout that worried her?
“I don’t want to walk back up 18 floors of stairs …”
No Seattle public schools have been affected.
The power went out at City Hall, but emergency generators quickly kicked on, so lights and elevators there were working.
“Well, as your phone call was coming in, all of our lights have come on,” said Paul Sherfey, a spokesman for the King County Superior Court.
He said power was out for about 45 minutes, and jurors and others were escorted from the building. “We’re fortunate it occurred during the lunch hour,” Sherfey said.
King County Deputy Prosecutor Ian Ith had just walked out of the King County Administration Building with a friend to grab lunch when the power went out around 11:30 a.m. His colleagues, who work in the King County Courthouse across the street, began leaving the building and gathering outside.
“All the generators kicked in, so there’s lights, just no computers,” which are needed to create a record of any court proceeding, said Ith, a former Seattle Times reporter and editor.
Ith returned to the administration building, climbed the stairs to his office on the 8th floor, and grabbed his laptop. Planning to work from home for the rest of the day, Ith hopped a bus but didn’t get very far.
By 12:20 p.m., his bus had made it to 4th Avenue and Union Street, only a few blocks from where his bus ride started. All the street lights are out, so each intersection is being treated as a four-way stop, he said.
“It’s total mayhem down here,” Ith said. “Everybody is trying to sardine themselves onto any available bus. Everything is just creeping along.”
Source :http://www.seattletimes.com/
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