November 20 2017
It’s no surprise being in the Pacific Northwest that Seattle rains and howls each Fall Season. To the City resident’s great inconvenience, this time high winds caused a power outage lasting 40 hours and 30 minutes covering 150,000+ homes in Western Washington, including our office building and the Tukwila Data Center.
So what happened?
The blackout started approximately 5:07 p.m. on Nov 13th and our backup infrastructure systems in place seamlessly transferred power from our Utility Feed to the Generator Feed, resulting in continuous operation at full capacity.
Approximately 6 poles fell just west of our property, along Military Road, and several trees were down which hampered Seattle City Light’s (SCL) efforts to restore power sooner:
(Above picture was taken on Nov 13 2017. Not showing clearly on the picture are several poles down behind the trees)
We received updates about the power restoration efforts underway, however, due to the massive trees that needed to be cleared out in order to reach some of the poles, the resolve time projected continuously got pushed back. In efforts of preparing for the worst case scenario, we monitored our generator closely in order to ensure we replenished fuel well ahead of time.
After 2 days of power outage at our data center, we are happy to report that we are finally back with power as of November 15 2017!
Our team worked tirelessly around the clock to guarantee our data center was continually powered on, in addition to frequently updating our customers base with any and all status insight of note, as they were made available to us.
Stay dry and enjoy Thanksgiving!