Power has been restored to 97 percent of Puget Sound Energy customers affected by Tuesday’s hurricane winds. For the remaining customers, PSE expects power to be restored by the estimated time we provided earlier this week, or within a few hours of that time. Due to the significant amount of damage crews experienced in the field, small groups of customers in the hardest hit areas of King County will have their estimated recovery time delayed.
“We know our customers have been making plans based on our estimates and this has been a long and difficult time for them,” said Michelle Vargo, PSE Senior Vice President of Operations. “Our crews have been working diligently to meet the estimates previously provided. Now that we have different expectations for some customers, we want them to know this as soon as possible. Work will continue 24 hours a day until power is restored to every customer affected by last Tuesday’s powerful storm.”
South King County:
There are approximately 3,000 customers without power, mainly in Renton Highlands, Enumclaw, Maple Valley, Hobart and Ravensdale. For the majority of customers, the fault will be resolved around 6 p.m. tonight or within a few hours. At this time, we expect approximately 500 customers to have their estimated recovery time moved to Monday, November 25 at 3:00 PM.
North King County:
There are approximately 18,000 customers without power, primarily in Issaquah, Mirrormont, Sammamish (Pine Lake, Klahanie and Sahalee), Mercer Island and parts of Bellevue. The majority of customers will still have their outages restored on or within a few hours of 10am on Monday 25 November. However, small groups of customers will see their estimated recovery time moved to Tuesday, November 26 at 2:00 AM. pm At this time we do not have an exact number of customers whose expected time to have their service restored will be delayed, but we expect this to be a limited number.
Why are estimated recovery times delayed?
Work was much slower due to the number of fallen trees, broken poles, downed wire and damaged equipment. Each of these recovery tasks is complex and requires multiple resources to repair. There are more than 150 crews and 70 tree crews working in the field. Each crew consists of 4-5 people, plus flaggers and support staff.
What can customers expect?
The PSE outage map is currently being updated. If a customer’s estimated restoration time remains unchanged, we still expect power to be restored at the scheduled time or within a few hours of that time while crews complete the jobs. For all customers, as our field crews receive more detailed information about their outage, PSE will update the outage map with a more specific time for their home or business.
