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UPDATE, 4:30 p.m. | City Light says the outage was caused by a problem with an underground cable and that power was restored at 2:30 p.m.

ORIGINAL POST | A power outage that affected some 9,700 homes and businesses in Queen Anne, Fremont, Magnolia and Ballard for the last 45 minutes is being repaired. but 1,400 customers remained without power around 2 p.m., said Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen

According to Seattle City Light’s Twitter feed, an equipment failure is to blame for the 1:19 p.m. outage.

“Right now it looks like a cable failure of some kind, but we don’t have that completely locked down,” Thomsen said.

UPDATE 8:50 P.M.| Power has been fully restored to more than 43,000 people, according to Seattle City Light. Investigators are still searching for what caused the breaker failure at about 5:30 p.m. today. The approximate outage area was bounded by Northeast 123rd Street, Aurora Avenue, Lake Washington and Northeast 35th Street.

UPDATE 8:03 P.M.| City Light is tweeting that power has been restored to 95 percent of customers in the outage area.

UPDATE 7:35 P.M.| The power outage closed six Seattle Parks and Recreation facilities tonight: Meadowbrook Community Center and Pool, Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center, Magnuson Community Center, and Green Lake Community Center and Pool.  A release from the parks department said it expects all of those facilities to be open Saturday, though.

UPDATE 7:05 P.M. | Seattle City Light says that crews addressing a breaker failure at a North Seattle substation should be able to get power back on by 9 p.m. The utility tweeted that up to 43,000 people are without power.

UPDATE 6:55 P.M.| Power is coming back to several neighborhoods, including parts of Ravenna, View Ridge, Laurelhurst and the University District.

ORIGINAL POST | The power suddenly went out in several Seattle neighborhoods Friday afternoon, affecting at least 23,573 customers, according to Seattle City Light’s outage map. Those neighborhoods include Wedgwood, Ravenna, Green Lake, Roosevelt, the U District, Laurelhurst, Windermere, View Ridge, Maple Leaf, Meadowbrook and Lake City.

Seattle City Light says its crews went to a North Seattle substation to try to fix the outage, but it does not know the cause of the outage yet.

Drivers going north on Interstate 5  reported seeing a big flash just north of the Ship Canal before the outage.

Ronnie Castro tweeted to The Seattle Times, “I was on 5N exiting Lake City around 6:00 when I saw it. Looked like lightning. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Took me 20 minutes to exit the freeway.”

The outage has affected several North Seattle traffic lights and is creating long backups.

We will update this post as more information becomes available.

Tangled power lines trap a worker in a vehicle at a construction site accident along Denny Way on Monday.
(Seattle Times Photo / Greg Gilbert)

Downed power lines at a construction site along Denny Way closed traffic for hours on Monday.
(Seattle Times Photo / Ken Lambert)

UPDATE 3:30 P.M.| Everything but the right, westbound lane of Denny Way has reopened in time for rush hour. King County Metro’s Route 8 bus line, which was going to be rerouted through the evening, is back on its regular route.

Seattle Department of Transportation spokeswoman Marybeth Turner says there may be a few intermittent  interruptions as  crews continue fixing nearby power lines.

ORIGINAL POST

Three construction workers were each trapped in different vehicles for about two hours after the operator of an excavator knocked down high-tension power lines at a construction site on the north side of Denny Way at Pontius Avenue North in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.

Kyle Moore, a spokesman for the Seattle Fire Department, said the excavator operator knocked down the power lines at 11:37 a.m., causing four power poles to topple over. One pole landed on top of the cab of a dump truck and a second fell onto a row of cars parked on John Street, one block north of Denny Way, he said.

Live power lines, each carrying 26,000 volts, draped over the excavator, a second dump truck and portions of city streets. No one was injured, but road closures in the area were expected to last for hours.

Seattle City Light employees accessed an underground vault to shut off the power before the three men — who all work for a private contractor employed by the Seattle utility — could safely exit their vehicles at 1:39 p.m., Moore said. He said the men most likely would have been electrocuted had they attempted to get out of their vehicles before the power was cut.

Once the workers were freed, Moore said the scene was turned over to Seattle City Light and the Seattle Department of Transportation. The excavator operator was also to be interviewed by Seattle police, he said. The power surge caused numerous automatic fire alarms to go off in surrounding buildings and some businesses experienced power interruptions.

A spokesman for Seattle City Light did not immediately return messages.

Portions of Denny Way, between Stewart Street and Fairview Avenue, is expected to be closed at least through 11 p.m. However, both eastbound lanes and one lane of westbound of Denny have reopened at Minor Avenue.

John Street, between Stewart and Fairview, will also be closed for several hours.

Metro spokesman Jeff Switzer said at least one Metro route, Route 8, would be rerouted around the area through the evening commute.

UPDATE: 10:10 p.m.

After an evening that saw more than 20,000 customers lose their power due to storms that swept through the city tonight, Seattle City Light reports that its on its way to restoring power to the remaining 1,300 customers who are still without it.

City Light said most of the power was restored within five hours of the 5 p.m. peak outages caused by high winds, rain and downed trees and branches.

A map of the outages is available at Seattle City Light’s website: http://www.seattle.gov/light/sysstat/#sthash.RVWs9YNh.dpuf

Nearly 490 Seattle City Light customers in the Highline area between White Center and Burien are still without power after a car hit a pole at 3:30 Saturday morning.

Originally some 2,900 customers were without power, said a spokesman for the utility.

City Light said power is expected to be restored by 2:30 Saturday afternoon to all customers.

The accident took place near the intersection of Des Moines Memorial Drive South and 17^th Place South.

The King County Sheriff’s Office was investigating, the utility said.

Power was restored to some 7,300 Seattle City Light customers who were without it for about an hour in Southeast Seattle this morning.

The cause of the outage isn’t immediately available.

Update, 8:30 p.m.

Power was quickly restored to almost all homes and businesses Tuesday evening, according to Seattle City Light.

By 8:15 p.m., just 75 customers were still without power, the utility announced in a news release.

Officials were working to replace seven damaged transformers to restore power to those buildings.

Original post, 6:58 p.m.

Nearly 5,000 West Seattle homes and businesses lost power Tuesday evening after a summer storm rolled through the Seattle area, dumping rain and causing dozens of lightning strikes, officials said.

The outages were first reported before 5:30 p.m. between Alki Avenue Southwest on the north, Southwest Holly Street on the south, 31st Avenue Southwest on the east and Puget Sound on the west, according to Seattle City Light.

By 6:45 p.m., about 3,200 customers were out of power.

The storm moved quickly from the southwest across the Puget Sound, weakening as it went, said Josh Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.

At least 66 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes had been reported as of 6:15 p.m., Smith said.

Storms like this can be common this time of year, he said.

The National Weather Service is forecasting a high of 71 degrees for Wednesday, with rain showers likely.

Four suspects who claimed to be helping a non-profit before they allegedly stole about $120,000 of copper from Seattle City Light have been caught.

Two people had earlier called City Light claiming to be members of the Cherokee Nation and asked for  a small amount of scrap copper for a nonprofit dedicated to helping disabled children.

City Light gave them access to its South Service Center on Tuesday, and that’s when about 40,000 pounds of insulated scrap copper wire disappeared.

Seattle Police Department detectives coordinating with the Portland Police Department caught two adults and two juveniles allegedly associated with the theft on Thursday. Police also found the two trucks they say were used in the theft; one at a Portland metal-recycling facility and the other in Milton, Pierce County.

City Light is reviewing its security procedures to prevent any more such thefts in the future, according to a release from the utility.

High copper prices have led to several similar thefts recently. In February, 1,000 feet of copper wire was stolen from the approach lighting for one of the three runways at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Earlier this month, nighttime events at Delridge Playfield in West Seattle were canceled because thieves stole 1,200 feet in wiring from there, according to Seattle Parks and Recreation.

The parks department has asked the public to be on the lookout for suspicious-looking maintenance work, especially at night when the department does not schedule work  on its fields.

Anyone who has information on similar thefts is asked to call the Seattle Police Department at 206-625-5011.

UPDATE: According to a Seattle City Light tweet sent out at 7:38 p.m., only 788 customers are still without power.

A power outage, detected just after 6 p.m., has knocked out service to about 2,081 customers in the Leschi area, according to Seattle City Light.

The outage’s cause is not yet certain, but it might be traceable to a downed tree, according to a Seattle City Light news release.

Seattle City Light estimated that it might take until 1 a.m. Sunday for power to be restored.

A map of the outage shows that the homes that have lost power extend from Lake Washington to as far west as 23rd Avenue, south to South Jackson Street, and north to East Pike Street.

A power outage that cut power to 2,200 customers in the South Lake Union area this morning was caused by a contractor on a construction job cutting into an underground cable, according to Seattle City Light.

Approximate boundaries of the outage were Republican Street, Denny Way, Aurora Avenue and Interstate 5.  Many office buildings and some traffic signals were affected.

The outage occurred shortly before 8 a.m.

By 8:40 a.m., power had been restored to all customers, said City Light’s Scott Thompson.

Thompson said the construction job where the cable was cut is on Ninth Avenue North, between Republican and Mercer Streets.