We question Seattle City Light after Ballard residents see 2 days of outages

SEATTLE — There was frustration for some people in Ballard after they were in the dark for a second straight day. The power was out before 8 a.m. Monday morning and most of Sunday. The power was restored Monday evening but many residents are still concerned.

The power has been on and off for more than 150 households and businesses in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood over the weekend. The outages happened on a stretch from 17th Avenue Northwest to 14th Avenue Northwest.

Terrie Paine, who uses a cane, has been struggling to get up to her second-floor unit in the Hjarta Condominiums in Ballard because of the darkened staircase.

“These stairwells and the hallways are extremely dark,” she said.

The outage also took out the lights at busy 15th and Northwest Market Street. They weren’t working and nobody was directing traffic.

“It’s insane,” exclaimed Patrick Baer. “It’s a very busy intersection and as a pedestrian, I was almost hit twice going across it.”

“Is it only in Ballard?” asked Martine Monaghan. “Is it only in this area? That’s what I would like to know.”

We went to Seattle City Light to get some answers.

Seattle City Light’s interim engineering officer said the outages involve the system’s infrastructure.

“We’ve had a series of cable failures and underground transformer failures that are unrelated to each other,” Andy Strong said.

The good news is the power is back on. The bad news is that it could go out again if another part of the system fails.

“Power will not miraculously restore itself. Restoring outages is our top priority,” he said.

Strong said they will do a complete engineering assessment to figure out why this happened to keep it from happening again.

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