UPDATE: In the midst of the outage area, Capitol Hill’s St. Mark’s Cathedral also went dark Sunday night just before the weekly broadcast of the Compline performance in the nave. The show went on in person but the weekly broadcast on KING FM had to turn to an archive recording to fill the time. Thanks to a fully charged cell phone, you can watch Sunday night’s performance here.
The Thanksgiving holiday weekend ended with darkness for thousands in northern Capitol Hill and Eastlake.
Seattle City Light said the outage that began around 9 PM knocked out power to around 6,700 customers in neighborhoods along around Volunteer Park, the Miller Park area, Roanoke, and into Eastlake.
City Light said it was working to determine the cause and did not have an immediate estimate for restoration.
UPDATE: Power came back on for most customers around 10 PM.
UPDATE x2: City Light reported full restoration just after 4 AM with customers in Eastlake finally getting switched back on. Reports in the area said a transformer had blown nearby. We’ll follow up to ask more about what caused the service disruption.
UPDATE x3: SCL says the failure was caused by “an overhead wire coming down near the boundary of Eastlake and Capitol Hill.”
Many people reported hearing loud booms prior to the outage indicating an equipment failure and transformer explosion were involved.
The power outage came on a cold, clear night with little wind and no precipitation.
Many intersections and streetlights in the area were darkened. Drivers should treat dark traffic signals as four-way stops. In some areas, streets had one side of dark homes and the other filled with houses still with power. Other blocks were fully dark save for the occasional home with a solar-charged battery system.
Seattle view of Eastlake / Capitol Hill neighborhood from Westlake. Whole hill above the highway is dark with no power. #seattle #PowerOutageUpdate @SEACityLight pic.twitter.com/2HNFek7caV
— Adam Konig is also on 🦋 (@Adamkonig) November 27, 2023
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The houses that had power were not using solar; the recovery cost for installing batteries doesn’t exist in our area.
There are homes, and more than a few significant buildings, which use diesel powered generators ( though you would hope that some of them were running on natural gas, since it burns cleaner ).
If you looked at the Purple Air map you would have seen a spike in the AQI, though it didn’t look like the numbers stayed below <80.
Power came on in Eastlake at 2:42 am. Such fun!