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A wide swath of downtown Vancouver went dark for a half-hour Wednesday afternoon due to an unspecified problem with a bank of transformers at the Bonneville Power Administration’s Ross Complex.
Traffic lights went dark, elevators stopped and business paused temporarily, but no major problems were reported when the power went out at 1:40 p.m.
Some buildings, such as the Clark County Jail, were supplied by backup emergency generators.
Emergency officials reported no major issues despite the loss of traffic signals. In at least one case, a Vancouver police officer directed traffic at Sixth and Washington streets. City maintenance workers were preparing to install temporary signs at intersections throughout downtown when the lights flicked on at 2:09 p.m.
Clark Public Utilities rerouted electricity from other substations, restoring power to 4,318 customers.
Three hours later, Bonneville officials still hadn’t determined what went wrong. They had isolated the problem at a bank of transformers in a substation on the grounds of the Ross Complex in the West Minnehaha neighborhood.
“They weren’t doing any maintenance or working directly with the equipment,” BPA spokesman Doug Johnson said. “It just went out of service, and we’re trying to figure out exactly why.”
The failure affected two Clark Public Utilities substations, at King Street downtown and at 20th and F streets in the Arnada neighborhood.
Within moments, Clark County officials checked elevators in affected county buildings to see if anyone was trapped.
All was OK inside the courthouse building and the public health center on the Veterans Affairs campus. But one person was stuck in the six-story Public Service Center elevator.
Others took the opportunity for an impromptu break, including students at Hough Elementary School.
Mary Lou Moser said she was watching “Morning Glory” at the downtown cinema when the power went out. She said the theater provided rain checks, but a problem arose when she and other customers tried to drive out of the nearby parking garage. Without electricity, a crossing arm-style barricade would not budge.
Moser said several cars instead scooted around a concrete barrier, methodically backing in and out inch by inch.
“I was determined to get out of there,” Moser said. “What if there had been a fire?”
An unrelated outage occurred about 5:45 p.m. Wednesday in Hockinson, where 37 customers lost power, said Clark Public Utilities spokesman Mick Shutt. Crews expected to fix that outage, caused by an equipment failure, by about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Shutt said.
Staff writers Tom Vogt, Howard Buck, Scott Hewitt and John Branton contributed to this report.
