Hundreds in downtown Olympia without power Wednesday afternoon
Much of downtown Olympia went dark Wednesday afternoon due to an equipment failure, according to Puget Sound Energy, cutting power for 679 PSE customers.
What caused the equipment to fail was under investigation as of 1:45 p.m., according to PSE spokesperson Andrew Padula. He said PSE found out about the outage just before 1 p.m.
At roughly 12:30 p.m., Olympia Fire Department crews were dispatched to a fire alarm activation at Heritage Bank on the 200 block of Fifth Avenue Southwest, Battalion Chief J.D. Young told The Olympian.
Around the same time, crews were dispatched to the 800 block of Jefferson Street Southeast for another fire alarm activation, to the 500 block of Washington Street Southeast for a non-emergency elevator rescue, and to the 300 block of Ninth Avenue Southeast for downed wires. All calls were related to the outage, Young said.
According to a PSE map, the outage affected areas from about State Avenue Northeast to about Union Avenue Southeast, and from Capitol Lake to about Adams Street Southeast — though Young said the area of the outage wasn’t uniformly shaped.
Olympia Police Department and Public Works assisted downtown, as well, Young said. Downtown roads were closed periodically as OFD crews assessed and addressed potential safety hazards.
Stoplights in the downtown core were dead as of 1:45 p.m., and PSE was estimating power would be restored by 3:30 p.m. Fire officials advise to treat all non-working street lights as four-way stop signs.
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 2:03 PM.
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