Flashing school zone beacons going up on NE 75th Street (UPDATE)

April 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment

This morning, a crew of three Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) workers started installing the first of two flashing school zone beacons on NE 75th Street.

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We were told by a crew member that both beacons, one on either side of Eckstein Middle School, would be installed by tomorrow, Friday, April 5.

Once the beacons are in, the next step is for Seattle City Light to hook them up to power.

SDOT_Eckstein_beacon1

These flashing school zone beacons are one of the first projects listed by SDOT as planned improvements to NE 75th Street.

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Thank you to the Wedgwood Community Council, who spotted the work happening this morning and spread the word on twitter.

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UPDATE (Monday, April 22): On Friday, April 19, we got word from Seattle City Light’s Scott Thomsen that a crew had connected the east beacon that morning already, but would be back around 1 PM to connect the other.

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With that notice, the entire Ravenna Blog newsroom sped up the hill, in the rain, to catch the crew at their work…only to reach them just as they were pulling away!

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That was fast.

Now that spring break is over for Seattle students, we’re looking into whether the beacons have been in use yet or not. We’ll update this post again when we know for sure.

Filed Under: Eckstein Middle School, Photos, Ravenna, Seattle City Light, Seattle Department of Transportation, Wedgwood

Lightning, thunder, hail, and power outages: Happy Saturday!

April 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Saturday afternoon started off exciting enough: Lots of rain. Lightning and thunder starting around 4:40 PM. Then some hail. LOTS of hail in some places.

This is from Ballard:

Then the power outage reports started coming in. The first report of lights out came in at 5:53 PM, from Wallyhood:

Lower Wallingford. Then SE Green Lake. Eastlake. Montlake. Ravenna and NE 65th Street. South University District.

When the Seattle City Light Outage Map finally updated, things looked like this:

Screen grab of the Seattle City Lights outage page, taken around 7 PM. Service to Green Lake and Montlake had already been restored, but nearly 15,000 other customers were still affected.

Screen grab of the Seattle City Lights outage page, taken around 7 PM. Service to Green Lake and Montlake had already been restored, but nearly 15,000 other customers were still affected.

Here’s the Seattle City Light twitter feed, with the details:

And as now (7:30 PM), power is coming back in some of the affected areas.

Quite a day. A good day to be paying attention to Twitter:

Oh yeah. And apparently there was a car on fire at the Roosevelt Whole Foods:

Filed Under: Northeast Seattle, Power Outage, Seattle City Light

Power outage along NE 65th St blamed on crow

July 10, 2012 by 4 Comments

Shortly before 1:00 PM this afternoon, sections of seven Northeast Seattle neighborhoods lost power. At peak, approximately 3,800 customers were affected.

Screen capture of the outage at its peak taken from Seattle City Light’s System Status webpage.

Parts of Roosevelt, Ravenna, Bryant, Wedgwood, View Ridge, and Sand Point all took a hit along NE 65th St, while nearly all of Windermere went down. The estimated time of restoration was listed at 3 PM, but many customers are seeing their lights coming back on ahead of that time.

Last week’s outage was blamed on a tree (and the high winds helped, we imagine). But what’s to blame this time?

A crow. Nature is out to get us, apparently.

Filed Under: Bryant, Northeast Seattle, Ravenna, Roosevelt, Sand Point, Seattle City Light, View Ridge, Wedgwood, Windermere

Two blown transformers heard to be blamed for NE Seattle power outage (UPDATES)

July 3, 2012 by 1 Comment

UPDATE (2:58 PM): A quick check of the outage map reveals everything back to normal.

UPDATE (2:08 PM): Outage down to approximately 1,200 customers now.

UPDATE (1:03 PM): outage is down to approximately 1,800 customers Mostly in the Matthews Beach/View Ridge area of the map below affected.

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No, it’s not a comment on any Michael Bay movies — it’s a power outage.

Seattle City Light outage map screen grab from 12:45 PM.

More info on the Seattle City Light’s Power Lines blog:

Seattle City Light crews were responding to a power outage Tuesday that affected about 3,600 homes and businesses in the Ravenna, Roosevelt, View Ridge and Wedgwood neighborhoods of northeast Seattle.

The outage started about 11:20 a.m. A cause was not immediately known. An initial estimate for restoration of service was set for 3 p.m.

The general boundaries of the outage were NE 94th Street on the north, NE 65th Street on the south, Roosevelt Way NE on the west and Lake Washington on the east.

As of this posting, the cause is listed as “tree,” and the restoration time is estimated at 3:00 PM.

As we were calling the North Precinct about the dangerous traffic conditions at 15th Ave NE and NE 75th St — signals are out and many drivers on NE 75th St are not noticing and treating as a four-way stop — the officer on the other end of the phone blamed the outage on two transformers lost from the tops of poles, but we haven’t had confirmation of the exact cause from Seattle City Light.

Filed Under: Bryant, Maple Leaf, Northeast Seattle, Power Outage, Ravenna, Roosevelt, Seattle City Light, Seattle Police Department, Traffic, Updates, View Ridge, Wedgwood