Seattle City Light says that a transformer wire fell on a distribution wire, closing roads and disrupting traffic on state routes 509, 599 and 99 Wednesday morning, Aug. 18, 2021.

Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) crews were forced to close lanes in order to deal with power lines down on northbound SR 599.

Crews responded to the outage and closed roads due to the failure just before 3 a.m., which affected ~8,400 customers in the north Burien/Highland Park area and backed up traffic for miles.

Lanes of freeways near Burien were reopened at around 8:20 a.m. after being closed earlier so City Light crews could work to solve the outage.

As of 10:30 a.m., all power had been restored to customers in the area, according to Seattle City Light (SCL). At the start of the outage, about 8,400 customers were without power.

While the cause of the outage is still under investigation, a transformer wire broke and fell onto a distribution wire, which requires securing, City Light said.


 

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