Power restored after windstorm

Wind, Falling Trees Disrupted Service for Thousands

Seattle City Light crews worked through the night to complete the restoration of service for every customer affected by a windstorm that started pounding the Puget Sound region early Saturday morning.

At the height of the outages, about 28,000 homes and businesses were without power. Falling trees and branches were the primary cause of the outages, which often involved downed power lines.

Crews restored power to about 20,000 customers by 7am Saturday. Then they battled through gusty winds throughout the day to restore others, along with new outages that took place, including one that affected about 5,400 homes and businesses in the Ravenna and Bryant neighborhoods.

Crews restored service for the final two homes on NE 85th Street in Seattle about 10:30am Sunday. Restoration for those houses was complicated by extensive overgrowth along the 150 foot lines that deliver electricity directly to the houses. Vegetation management crews were brought in to trim the tree branches to provide clearance and allow lineworkers to hang new wires to replace the damaged ones.

Cases like this demonstrate the importance of planting the right tree to avoid conflicts with power lines. If you have questions about pruning the trees near the power lines for your home, contact a Seattle City Light arborist at 206-386-1902.

Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States. It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle area residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.