Seattle City Light has shut down the environmental remediation work at the homeless encampment site at 2826 NW Market Street in order to investigate the cause of the accidental power outage that occurred yesterday afternoon.

According to Scott Thompsen with Seattle City Light, work at the site is shut down until at least Tuesday as they investigates the accident.

“We are doing a full investigation into how and why the line was hit,” said Thompsen.

Yesterday Seattle City Light crews started digging into the topsoil of the site as part of the environmental remediation work needed to rid the site of contaminated soil. 18 inches of soil will be removed from the site.

Crews hit a an underground power conduit that ran under the site, which caused a widespread power outage that stretched from Eighth Avenue NW and Leary Way NW all the way to Golden Gardens and as far north as Sunset Hill.

“There have been number of comments and speculation from folks in the area suggesting any number reasons why this happened, but it was an error and an accident. It was a dangerous situation. Any time you dig into the ground it’s a dangerous situation, but certainly our crews do what they can to avoid it.”

The outage occurred at approximately 1:31 p.m. and left 1800 people without power. 1200 customers recovered service after about two hours. Final customers did not recover service until 7 p.m. The Port of Seattle at Shilshole Bay Marina was one of the nine last customers to find service returned.

This is the second accident that has occurred at the site since Seattle City Light crews started the remediation work.

Last Monday while crews were unloading an excavator, the bucket of the machine dropped off while being unloaded and popped a hydraulic line loose. Approximately five gallons of hydraulic fluid spilled on the ground.

Thompsen said that a Seattle City Light environmental cleanup crew dug up the soil where the fluid spilled and removed it that same day.

There have been numerous power outages in the last two weeks, and readers of the Ballard News-Tribune have asked if the outages are linked to the encampment work.

A recent outage occurred on July 28 and affected approximately 2,500 people.

Thompsen explained that the outage that occurred yesterday and the recent outages are in no way related.

He said crows caused the other outages.

“Sometimes the birds will peck at some of the wiring and in one some instances a bird will get into a neutral line,” said Thompsen.

A crow managed to peck a neutral line of a electrical terminal and caused the most recent outage.

“In that case electricity ran through the bird.”

Seattle City Light keeps record of what types of birds cause outages. Thompsen said that crows are one of the birds they track; however it can be difficult identifying the birds after electricity runs through them.

“We track the birds if we can, but it can be hard to identify them sometimes from what’s left of them.”