BELLEVUE, Wash. — Some Puget Sound Energy customers are crying foul after their power returned on Friday only to go out 11 hours later.
Customers believe the power was diverted to a nearby apartment building, plunging them back into the dark.
This happened in the Bridle Trails neighborhood in Bellevue. And surely the people in the Renton neighborhood still in the dark would be thrilled to be in their position.
But right behind me is what remains of the Puget Sound Energy crew that just came out of the woods having restored power.
But some neighbors 18 miles away in Bellevue believe PSE favored another customer over them.
The fury of the deadly bomb cyclone was surely felt by the Bridle Trails neighborhood. Residents lost power last Tuesday afternoon. Four hours later, a neighbor was killed by a falling tree. And everyone else remained in the dark.
“It was scheduled to come back Saturday and it came back Friday at nine, which we were all happy about,” said Jeff Nemeth, a Bridle Trails resident since 2019.
But it didn’t last.
“And then later that evening, about 8 o’clock after we tucked the kids in bed, power went out,” he said. “And that’s when we noticed the apartment complex which didn’t have power behind us, had power.”
He and his neighbors were once again in the dark, fuming.
“I thought they had switched our power off and put it to the apartment complexes to give, maybe more people power; I’m not sure,” Nemeth said. “But either way, we feel in this neighborhood that power was restored and then diverted.”
No one at the Lakes apartment complex would talk on camera. But off camera, they denied they received special treatment. Indeed, they said, what the neighbors didn’t see was their power was on for less than an hour Friday night, then went out again.
In a statement, Andrew Padula, a spokesman for PSE says, “We don’t turn off power to one group of residents in order to give power to another group ... but crews typically start by restoring power to essential services like hospitals, waste water systems, transportation and schools.”
As it is, Puget Sound Energy was especially hard hit.
They say they had to restore 400 miles of transmission lines that feed substations that provide power to large swaths of customers. That’s one reason power has been out for so long.
But, if their estimates are correct, everyone should have their power back Tuesday night, just in time for Thanksgiving.
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