SEATTLE — A fire at the at a City Light substation poured smoke into the air and knocked out power at the Space Needle for a short time Wednesday morning.
City light crews are still trying to figure out how this fire started, but the part that burned holds 26,000 volts -- enough to charge more than five thousand iPhones at the same time.
No one was injured by the fire.
“It was like a crackle, pop, then a big flame,” said Durrell LaGarde, who was working right next to the substation on the north end of the Seattle Tunnel Project.
He and his coworkers evacuated when ash from the fire started raining down them.
“I could feel it hitting me,” LaGarde said.
Right about that time the Space Needle and entire Seattle Center lost power. The Hawn family visiting from Iowa and was stranded atop the Space Needle, but said it only took about 10 minutes before the backup generators kicked on, allowing the elevators to run at half speed.
The generators also allowed everything except the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum to get back to business. Eventually firefighters decided to let the fire burn itself out when they realized what was burning: mineral oil inside a capacitor bank.
“This fire was not going to be extinguished by the use of water,” fire department spokesman Kyle Moore said. “We didn’t want to spread the oil anymore plus we had 26,000 volts of electricity. We didn’t want to put the firefighters in any more risk than need be.”
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