Seattle’s downtown core experienced major power outages Wednesday but the specific cause remains unknown.
Seattle City Light reported electricity was almost completely restored at around 12:45 p.m., about an hour after the outage zapped power from 60 percent of downtown and caused dark intersections, traffic delays and building evacuations.
Seattle City Light says there was an equipment failure at the Massachusetts Street and Union Substation that caused the “large outage” that impacted 12,000 electric meters. The customer count has not yet been completed. Mayor Ed Murray activated the Seattle Emergency Operations Center in response to the outage, but the Seattle Fire Department said the outage did not impact 911 services.
The approximate outage area stretched from Elliott Bay to I-5 and Pike to Jackson streets.
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
Police deployed traffic and parking enforcement officers downtown to assist with traffic control. All intersections with dark stoplights were to be treated as four-way stops. After power was restored, streets were clogged but returned to normal around 2 p.m.
The number of people stuck in elevators isn’t clear, but the Seattle Fire Department received 25 calls for elevator rescues — the first coming in at 11:35 a.m. at 619 3rd Ave., the last at 11:44 a.m. at 3131 Elliott Ave.
The Seattle Waterfront lost power, as did Seattle’s largest building, the Columbia Tower. Some people reported taking dozens of staircases to leave the 76-story building. KIRO 7 News reporter Essex Porter was at Columbia Tower during the outage, where he talked to a woman who walked down the stairs.