France may go dark tomorrow, but for residents of downtown Seattle elevators ground to a halt and lights went out across downtown Seattle late Wednesday morning as a major power outage struck. According to Komo News, the outage struck at about 11:30 a.m. The cause of the disruption was an equipment failure at Massachusetts Street Substation and was expected to last about two hours, according to Seattle City Light.
Large parts of downtown Seattle have lost power after equipment failure at a substation, city says - @KING5Seattle
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) May 25, 2016
The outage was causing major problems across the downtown area. At least seven elevator rescues were in progress as emergency responder spread across the area.
Traffic lights went dark at major intersection, causing backups and traffic jams.
Many workers fled darkened buildings out into the streets.
Ferry service from Seattle to Bremerton and Bainbridge Island also was disrupted and ferry passengers were warned to expect delays.