For anyone heading southbound from West Seattle: Thanks to Laura for the tip on a power outage in the White Center area. Seattle City Light‘s outage hotline lists two outages – one that could be described as White Center, affecting 4,000 homes/businesses, and another in Burien with about 3,000. The one in Burien is blamed on a fire, according to the hotline, but the other one is listed as “cause unknown.” More to come. 4:08 PM UPDATE: City Light’s latest news release now calls these one outage – here’s the full text:

A fire associated with a power outage in Burien and unincorporated King County has increased the number of customers affected by the outage to about 7,100 homes and businesses.

The fire is burning in a wooded utility right of way south of S 96th Street and west of Des Moines Memorial Drive. Power lines were reported on the ground in the area and at least one utility pole was burning.

Seattle City Light deenergized the power lines to allow firefighters to put out the blaze. City Light crews were dispatched to restore service once the fire was extinguished.

The cause of the outage was not immediately known. City Light expects to restore service to most of the affected customers by 5:30 p.m. by routing power around the damaged area. An estimate for full restoration of service will not be available until crews are able to inspect the damaged equipment.

The general boundaries of the outage are SW Barton Street on the North, SW 167th Street on the South, Glendale Way S on the East and Puget Sound on the West.

If that entire area is out – which is seldom the case with boundaries listed like this – that would include some of West Seattle. We’re off to check the area south of Barton, east of Puget Sound. 6:47 PM UPDATE: City Light says all but 200 of the affected homes/businesses have their power back.