West Seattle power outage: 108 customers in Arroyos area

| Utilities | West Seattle news

10:24 AM: Thanks to Susan for the tip – power is out for what Seattle City Light says is 108 customers (homes/businesses) in The Arroyos and vicinity. The cause isn’t yet known, but the utility hopes to have power back by mid-afternoon, as of the latest guesstimate.

P.S. This is the same footprint and customer count as the outage this past May that lasted more than 24 hours.

11:21 AM: Scott Thomsen of City Light tells WSB that the outage has been traced to “equipment failure” and they’re now hoping to have the power back by 4:30 pm.

7:36 PM: As pointed out in comments, it’s not fixed yet and the restoration guesstimate is now past midnight. SCL says an underground cable is what failed.

11:05 PM: Still out, says the City Light outage-tracker map, now pushing the guesstimate to 4 am-ish.

6:35 AM: JL says in comments that the power returned at 5 am – that would have been after more than 20 hours.

J Lardizabal August 24, 2016 (7:19 pm)

Still no power at 7 pm, and restoration estimate has been pushed back to past midnight

WSB August 24, 2016 (7:22 pm)

Ouch. SCL did say around mid-afternoon that they were still looking for the underground cable that failed.

Toni Reineke August 24, 2016 (10:12 pm)

The pole just off the southeast corner of my garden is where the outage started. Heard a loud noise (not quite a boom, like a loud firecracker) and then saw the trucks drive up.

The driver said that sometimes water seeps into the underground cables, which then decay. Don’t know whether that’s the full story or not.

As of 10:08 p.m., the a truck is still parked by the pole and there is no activity. I hope that they’re just parked there for the night and that people downhill from me now have power!

Toni Reineke August 24, 2016 (10:13 pm)

Should have added that the pole is on 106th between 42nd and California.

J Lardizabal August 25, 2016 (5:29 am)

Power restored at 5 am! This must be the third or fourth time this year we have lost power in the Arroyos.

WSB August 25, 2016 (6:34 am)

Thanks, JL. I linked the May outage coverage in this report – checked our archives and we also mentioned the Arroyos area in coverage of a wider outage during a storm in January: https://westseattleblog.com/2015/01/west-seattle-weather-watch-wind-arrives-at-least-1-outage/

Lon August 25, 2016 (4:51 pm)

The full story is that the underground cables in the Upper Arroyos are ancient and need to be replaced. Until that happens, we can expect more power outages. Yesterday’s cable break was three houses down from the one in May.

The Seattle City Light worker (not a supervisor) I talked to suggested leaning on the mayor and the city council. SCL knows about this situation, but correcting it does not appear to be one of their priorities.

Regarding refrigerators, we loaded ours with four bags of party ice from Safeway and then left it closed.

Duane August 25, 2016 (5:20 pm)

Not only are our underground wiring ancient, so if Century Link’s phone lines. I live on 42nd SW just off Marine View Drive. A few years ago the water company replaced water lines after so many breaks. City Light and Utilities need to get their act together and replace the ancient power and phone lines. My property taxes went up $1,000 from last year. I’d like something in return.

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