Friday night, you might recall, 3,000+ homes and businesses were without power in West Seattle – and many more lost it briefly – because of a problem at the Delridge Substation. It was the second consecutive Friday night with a problem there, though the previous week’s outage was only “momentary.” As promised, we asked Seattle City Light today if they’ve found out anything more. SCL spokesperson Scott Thomsen says the two might have been connected:

Friday’s outage was caused by an underground cable failure.

The previous outage in that area was likely caused by a branch falling into and then off of overhead powerlines in a wooded area nearby. Our crews patrolled the area immediately and a second time during daylight, but could not find evidence of what might have triggered it.

The area of overhead lines where that first problem occurred and the underground cable in Friday’s outage are connected. While we can’t make a conclusive connection between the two events, when faults happen in the overhead system like that, it will put additional stress on connected underground cables, shortening their lifespans.

The Delridge Substation (near the dead end of SW Juneau, west of 26th) also factored into two outages in less than a week last summer – July 31st and August 6th.