Seattle City Light says more than 4,000 customers around the areas above I-5 on the western edge of Capitol Hill and swaths near E Thomas were without power after a Thursday afternoon outage attributed, sadly, to “Bird/Animal Contact.”

SCL reports the outage began around 2:15 PM and says it expecting service to be restored by 8:45 PM. Typically, the city’s restoration estimates are conservative and power can be restored much earlier depending on the damage being repaired.

You can view outage information and track updates at seattle.gov/city-light/outages.

UPDATE: The outage was already reduced to fewer than 2,000 customers just after 3 PM.

UPDATE x2: SCL reported service was restored just before 8 PM after repairing a final downed wire near 15th and Thomas.

Two transformer fires were reported around the time of the initial outage. Seattle Fire was called to a pole fire reported at 15th and Thomas just before 2:15 PM and a second in the 300 block of Summit Ave E at 2:16 PM as the grid absorbed whatever failure resulted from the animal incident.

CHS reported here in June about the remaining areas of Capitol Hill where utility lines have not yet been moved underground by city work and redevelopment to improve service reliability and help avoid long disruptions.

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.