Concerns about PSE, recent power outages
Having lived in the same house on the Island for 44 years, we’ve experienced many power cuts due to windstorms. Usually a power loss was local and restored in a few hours. Restorations were attended by Puget Power Energy crews working on our immediate streets and the transformer circuit breaker at the bottom of our hill. The breaker serves less than a 100 homes.
Two power cuts on Saturday Oct. 25 and Monday Oct. 27 were quite different to prior experience.
First Cut – This started around 8 p.m. on Saturday and lasted until 9 p.m. on Sunday. Several calls to PSE got the same-recorded message: – “Your power loss has been reported and involves 1017 homes, PSE cannot estimate when power will be restored.” Eventually we were routed to a live person at 6 p.m. on Sunday who indicated that PSE had dispatched a “single crew” to Mercer Island and we could expect power restoration between 7 and 8 p.m.
Actually restoration was at 9 p.m. We were lucky. Many Island homes were without power until Monday morning. Oddly, we didn’t observe any PSE crews on our hill or at the transformer during the 25 hours of power cut and restoration.
Second Cut – In 44 years we had never experienced a second cut the day following restoration and yet this occurred at 6 p.m. on Monday Oct. 27, during benign weather conditions. Our call to PSE received the same recorded message as the first cut including the number 1,017 homes. We persisted and this time the live person quoted midnight for restoration and this occurred at 11:40 p.m. Again, during this cut and restoration no PSE crews appeared on our hill or at our transformer.
Conclusions and suspicions:
We conclude that Mercer Island has become a low priority for power cut restoration.
We conclude that PSE has divided the Island into chunks. Thus a single tree (for example) falling in our chunk causes power loss to 1,017 homes.
We suspect that PSE has subcontracted power restoration work at lower costs and degraded the response time for power restoration. Certainly PSE has to do a lot of explaining to Mercer Islanders.
Suggestions:
Mercer Island City should aggressively pursue these concerns. We are willing to serve on an ad hoc committee to collect the facts and develop recommendations for PSE to improve its poor performance.
Perhaps the city should provide a website to collate residents concerns.
Maybe it is time to bury at least the supply lines on main routes so that power losses are always local to small groups of homes.
Jocelyn and Michael Miller
Thanks to Council for letter to KCLS
Many thanks to our City Council, who sent a comprehensive letter to the KCLS Board of Trustees on Tuesday, Nov. 4, asking them “not to proceed at this time with entering into any construction or other related contracts for the renovation of the Mercer Island Library,” and asking them to direct KCLS staff, city staff, and the Mercer Island Library Board to work together with the public to “hopefully agree upon further changes to the project.”
Many thanks, too, to the 54 Mercer Island citizens who attended the City Council meeting and who raised their hands to be counted when asked who opposes KCLS plans for our library.
Thanks as well to the 17 Mercer Island citizens who spoke clearly and concisely to the City Council about their specific objections to the plans. After the last one had spoken, Councilmember Jane Brahm reported that she had just received a text from her husband saying that the comments were much more interesting than the football game.
Please come to the KCLS Board meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 5 p.m. at the KCLS Service Center in Issaquah. Everyone is welcome to speak for three minutes, or just come to listen. Carpools will leave from the library at 4 p.m. Please email us at libraryremodel.org if you would like a ride. Visit our website at www.libraryremodel.org for updated information and to watch our five-minute video.
Meg Lippert
