Blackout Plans In Snohomish County

August 14, 2001 By Bryan Johnson

SNOHOMISH COUNTY - The Snohomish County Public Utilities District will soon be mailing alerts to its customers spelling out the areas for rolling blackouts.

PUD officials say that's not a prediction, it's a precaution.

Neil Neroutsos of the PUD says there are many factors that could create blackouts:

"Continued drought conditions, for example. There could be transmission problems; you could have a major generator go off line, for example; continued cold spell coupled with high demand."

Four Zones

The blackout plan divides the county into four zones:

The North, which includes Marysville and Darrington. The area east and south of Everett. The South region, which includes Lynnwood and Edmonds. And Everett and vicinity. The PUD says critical areas such as hospitals and convalescent homes will be protected.

1-In-6 Chance

Neroutsos had this response when asked how long blackouts could last:

"We are expecting one to two hours per set of outages. It could be as long as four hours, but that's less likely. The plan distributes the outages so it is equitable to all our customers."

The PUD says the chance of a blackout is about 1 in 6. That's about three times normal odds.

Seattle City Light estimates the chance of blackouts in it service area only 1 in 10. The utility says it, too, is drafting a blackout plan, but it is not scheduled to be released for another three weeks or so.

http://www.komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=13325

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 15, 2001