Why did thousands of Pierce County customers lose power today? Tacoma Public Utilities says an issue at its Pearl Street substation triggered widespread outages that reached from Tacoma to the Key Peninsula.
How the outages unfolded
The first outage affected 2,258 customers and began around 9:30 a.m. Most of the other clusters appeared around 11:30 a.m. Early in the day, about 25,000 to 27,000 Tacoma Public Utilities customers were without power, mostly across Tacoma’s North End and University Place. Ruston was also affected.
By midday, that number had dropped to about 12,600, and a later update showed more than 13,000 impacted at one point. By early afternoon, Tacoma Public Utilities reported 116 outages affecting about 2,300 customers in Tacoma, and a separate tracking site showed about 6,100 people without power across the county. Reports differ because the numbers changed quickly through the day.
Peninsula Light customers also affected
Peninsula Light Company gets its power from Tacoma Public Utilities’ transmission lines, so a problem on the Tacoma system typically affects its whole territory. That area covers Gig Harbor, the Key Peninsula and Fox, Raft and Herron islands. The company’s outage map was down for a time, and a spokesperson estimated thousands of customers were affected. Once the map was restored, it showed about 36,000 customers without power.
What crews are doing
Crews were sent to the Pearl Street substation to find the cause and restore power as quickly as possible. Utility officials had not given a restoration time, and the exact cause of the problem has not been released…