A “large” power outage affected hundreds of workers in downtown Seattle on Wednesday afternoon.
Seattle City Light said that an equipment failure was to blame for the outage, which hit just after 11:30 a.m. in neighborhoods ranging from Belltown to Pioneer Square. SCL said an estimated time of restoration was 12:40 p.m. but others noted longer delays.
The outage is causing a bevy of problems, from folks stuck in elevators to traffic delays.
All power is lost in the following area. Waterfront to I-5, and Pike to Jackson. Treat all signals as all ways stops pic.twitter.com/79O5KByFmp
— seattledot (@seattledot) May 25, 2016
Along with government buildings like Seattle Central Library and Seattle City Light itself, there are a number of tech companies currently without power, including startups like Moz and Pitchbook. Co-working spaces like Galvanize and venture capital firms like Madrona were also affected.
Internet snow day for Seattle!
— Sarah Bird (@SarahBird) May 25, 2016
oh no! pioneer square also has no power.
— Marcelo Calbucci (@calbucci) May 25, 2016
Power outage downtown. Wowza.
— Mikey Tom (@mikeytom) May 25, 2016
When the power goes out in all of Seattle downtown and you are trapped on the 34th floor with no internet.
— Amy T Falcone (@AmyTFalcone) May 25, 2016
Amazon, headquartered in South Lake Union, seems to be OK.
We're good in SLU at Amazon.
— Greg Bulmash? (@YiddishNinja) May 25, 2016
Uber sent text messages to drivers in the area, asking them to “avoid trips into downtown.”
While the lack of internet and power caused issues for many workers, food carts seemed to be doing fine.
What do you do during an #epicpoweroutage? Go to lunch at the food trucks. pic.twitter.com/iqBuqr8Iam
— Seattle magazine (@Seattlemag) May 25, 2016
Update, 12:33 p.m.:
Seattle City Light said power was restored in downtown, about an hour after the outage began.
Power has been restored to downtown Seattle. Crews are still investigating the cause.
— Seattle City Light (@SEACityLight) May 25, 2016
Update, 3:30 p.m.:
The City said that 60 percent of downtown Seattle was affected by the outage.
“Thanks to the quick work of City Light crews, power was restored to downtown within about an hour,” Mayor Ed Murray said in a statement. “Seattle police officers responded to manage traffic on downtown streets, and firefighters responded to calls from people stuck in elevators. Thankfully, there were no significant injuries as a result of this incident.”
The outage was caused by a “substation breaker operation” at the Massachusetts Substation, which caused power loss at the Union Substation that also serves downtown.
