BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Shortly after 4pm, Wednesday, March 9th, a power outage was reported in downtown Bellingham.
Whatcom County Jail personnel reported seeing a transformer explode at the intersection of Central Avenue and Prospect Street. Live wires were reported down as a result.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and Bellingham Fire Department crews were immediately dispatched to the scene.
As of the initial publication of this story, the extent of the outage was not known but that the Whatcom County Jail facility and the Whatcom County Courthouse were without power.
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Click for more informationAbout 4:55pm, PSE provided a map identifying the area where nearly 600 of their customer locations were impacted.
About 4:35pm, Bellingham Fire crews were dispatched to the nearby Bellingham Towers building, 119 N Commercial Avenue, for an elevator rescue. It was not immediately known if that was related to the power outage or not.
PSE said at 4:50pm that they estimated power would be restored by 6:30pm.
By 5:35pm, the number of impacted addresses had been reduced to 26 and the map of the impacted area appeared as follows.
Equipment failure was cited by PSE as the cause of the power outage.
It is very helpful to have local news that is immediate.
Power in the Crown Plaza building is out as well.