Power Outage Hits Thousands in Downtown Seattle on Christmas Day
An early morning power outage hit thousands of Seattle City Light customers in downtown and south Seattle neighborhoods on Christmas Day thanks to a damaged switchbox.
Christmas lights — and the rest of them — went out for 7,509 customers shortly before 6 a.m., according to Seattle City Light media relations manager Jenn Strang, and caused train delays. Some light rail passengers were also unable to pay with credit cards or reload their ORCA cards at stations because of the blackout.
Crews found the damaged switch and were able to restore power to more than half its affected customers by 8 a.m.
As of that time, 2,843 customers remained without power in areas mostly concentrated in North Beacon Hill and Sodo, according to City Light’s outage map.
The cause of the outage remains unclear. City Light did not specify if weather, everyday wildlife or reindeers tangled in power lines were to blame.
“Fingers crossed, but we think we’ll get this one cleared pretty quickly here,” Strang said.