‘Sunday was a little crazy’ during power outage, Bellingham Fire captain says
Though Sunday’s power outage knocked out service to more than 13,000 PSE customers, it does not appear to have created much more than a busy afternoon for the Bellingham Fire Department.
“Sunday was a little crazy,” Captain Dave Pethick told The Bellingham Herald.
According to the Pulse Point app, between 3:56 p.m., when the outage started, and 5:36 p.m., when Puget Sound Energy says power was restored to the 13,283 affected customers, Bellingham Fire received the following calls:
▪ A report of wires down at 3:57 p.m. in the 1400 block of Grant Street.
▪ A report of a fire alarm at 3:58 p.m. in the 1200 block of 11th Street.
▪ A rescue at 4:02 p.m. in the 900 block of North Forest Street.
▪ A report of a commercial fire at 4:08 p.m. at the Post Point Wastewater Treatment Plant.
▪ An elevator rescue at 4:14 p.m. along Old Fairhaven Parkway.
▪ A report of a structure fire at 4:24 p.m. in the 1200 block of North Forest Street at the Community Food Co-op.
Pethick said that none of the calls actually resulted in an out-of-control fire being found or any injuries.
When the power outage hit, Pethick said a generator and incinerator kicked on at the wastewater treatment plant, and smoke from that was seen and reported as a possible commercial fire.
The structure fire reported at the Co-op, meanwhile, turned out to be a line down and smoke from a nearby barbecue, Pethick said, adding that the report did not include what type of line was down.
The wires that were down on Grant Street had already “cycled out,” Pethick said, and crews quickly moved on to other calls when they found no fire.
Pethick said firefighters did have to rescue four people who were stranded in two different elevators during the outage, but that nobody was injured.
PSE spokesperson Andrew Padula told The Herald that an equipment failure was to blame for the outage.
This story was originally published August 28, 2019 at 12:54 PM.
