Seattle City Light: Estimated Restoration Times

City Light crews went around and surveyed the damage. They immediately responded where they could, such as replacing a unit torn off a house when the branch brought down a line. Other jobs, such as an entire street of downed lines, were marked for the bigger crews. Photo by Diane Hettrick.

From the City Light website

Last night’s wet snow and winds caused outages for many of our customers. We know being without power is a big deal, and we have crews working as quickly and safely as they can. Unfortunately, right now, due to dynamic conditions, providing accurate estimates is a challenge.

An estimated time of restoration (ETOR) is first generated at the time of the outage. As this is manually updated when more information is known about cause and repairs, the ETOR is most reliable when the status of the outage is “Dispatched,” meaning a crew has been assigned. During large scale events with multiple individual outages (hundreds in this case), our crews and staff are focused on restoration and may not have information available or the capacity to update the ETOR for each event. Please be aware restoration times are estimates and each restoration will vary based on the unique circumstances of the individual outage, so it could take less or more time than the ETOR.

We’re sorry for the uncertainty and inconvenience. We’ll keep working and updating as we know more.