Power Restored After Second Power Outage At Seattle Center, Queen Anne

Power is Restored at the Seattle Center is after it was without power for the second time Thursday. Seattle City Light says there is an underground cable failure.

About 340 customers in Queen Anne are also without power since about 11 a.m.

At 3:15 p.m., Seattle City Light temporarily shut down power to the Seattle Center in order to make repairs in its vaults. In addition to the organizations and businesses on the Center grounds, there are approximately 50-70 businesses around Seattle Center, as well as two apartment complexes that also will lose power during the repairs.

Power was finally restored around 7:15PM Thursday.

The general boundaries of the outage were Roy Street on the north, Eagle Street on the south, Valley Street on the east and 2nd Avenue West on the west.

A spokesperson for Seattle Center said the Space Needle had its own backup generator and is open for business as usual.

The Pacific Science Center is on a different grid and is not affected by the outage, but their parking garage is.

The Repertory Theatre has cancelled its performance of Opus for Thursday night.

Earlier Thursday, an electrical problem plunged the Space Needle, parts of Seattle Center and homes in the area into darkness.

A Seattle City Light official said there was a problem with a switch in an electrical vault underneath McCaw Hall at Seattle Center at about 5 a.m. Overnight security guards saw smoke coming from the vault and called firefighters.

The failure triggered a power outage to about 6,800 customers on lower Queen Anne.

KIRO 7 reporter Jeff Dubois was live at about 5:15 a.m. when the Space Needle was dark as a result of the failure.

As he was reporting on the phone, the lights came back on after a generator kicked in.

Dubois arrived as a second fire crew arrived at the scene and smoke was coming from the Seattle City Light electrical vault.