West Seattle, Washington
12 Thursday
OK, Upper Fauntleroy here got power back just after quarter till 11. We got that report from the home front while driving around to see the extent of the outage. But as of 11, some other areas are still out — you gotta ache in particular for the south end of Beach Drive, Lincoln Park Way, Lowman Beach, areas that took a week or so to get it back after The Big Outage — not to mention the Morgan Junction businesses now in their third major outage (the one on Wednesday of last week lasted all day and into the night for them, even though up here that “re-outage” lasted “only” two hours). We tried to soothe a younger member of our entourage by saying “you know, there are places in the world where life is like this all the time, power comes on, goes out, comes on, goes out,” but the younger member shut us up smartly by retorting, “yeah, but they’re USED TO IT.” Maybe we should be, too, by now.
Weird … five minutes after we listened to the City Light recording (206-684-3000 and wade thru the menu), they posted a new one that was much vaguer. Gone were the specifics about a certain area that might be out for eight hours; gone were the specifics about the “broken cross arm on a pole” being to blame … instead, the 9:07 pm update had the language of bureaucracy, “no estimated time for restoration” and “the cause is unknown.” The boundaries seemed a little off too, considering what we saw as we drove north of Morgan Junction. If you’ve got yours back, please post a comment and let us know; our correspondent back home in Upper Fauntleroy is definitely still in the dark.
To use an old quote, “this is getting old.” Yes, we too are in the outage zone. Again. Took a while to get out of the house and find someplace to go online. Looks like some areas have gotten their power back — in fact, we were driving past Chuck & Sally’s when a couple blocks right there north of M-Junction went on, and the smokers out on the corner all cheered lustily. But to the south, we’re not back yet, and the City Light outage hotline (which blames “a broken crossarm on a power pole”) says there’s a certain chunk that could be out for up to 8 hours. Stand by for more …
… to the deadline for naming two future WS parks, including “Junction Plaza” (currently home to the WS Tree as the holiday season winds down).
Early this morning, work crews arrived in the vicinity of the Upper Fauntleroy sinkhole, which now is graced by a sign about the adjacent stairway being closed for repairs.
Can you believe it’s been exactly two weeks since we all woke up to the aftermath of 2+ inches of rain and 60+ mph wind? For many of us, the nightmare ended when the power came back. But for others, the damage lingers — these WS folks say it’s not all Ma Nature’s fault.
Caveat first, we are not condoning New Year’s Eve drunkenness and we trust that if you leave the house, you will pick a DD or take a taxi. (What happened to Avi, memorialized in a poster we saw in a WS shop window last night, could happen to you.) That said, there’s no denying that many of us will drink something alcoholish Sunday night. So this might be helpful info, if you, like us, need to buy something to serve @ home: West Seattle’s state liquor stores are closed Sunday, but they’ve got helpful signs posted noting that the one in The Junction will be open later than usual on Saturday (10 pm). And if you’re just looking for fine wine/champagne, you CAN shop Sunday @ West Seattle Cellars, according to their site.
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