The accident was the result of a pinched wire and bad electrical work (including a lack of grounding), according to City Light, in an area of the electrical system that powers four streetlights in the 1500 block of Queen Anne Avenue N. In the two weeks since Sammy’s death, the city has been working to find out why this dangerous zone went unnoticed for so long.

“Our crews investigated the cause. We discovered that the original installation in 2006 did not include proper grounding of the four lights. Our crews have made the necessary repairs to all these lights and tested for any potential electrical charges. There is no electrical charge to any of the lights or groundcover plates. All the streetlights are functioning,” City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco said in a release last week.

While City Light officials said the accident was an “isolated incident,” the faulty work that caused it may have passed unnoticed due to a lack of inspection records, according to a report by the Seattle PI released Monday. From the PI:

A city invoice showed that an inspector had billed for the electrical project twice in 2005, when the system was installed, said Richard Sheridan, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation. But no record exists documenting what the inspector did or found during the visits.

“At the time (the project was installed), we did not require written field reports from electrical inspectors,” Sheridan said Monday.

After Sammy’s death, the city discovered the pinched wire and missing grounding. Sheridan says the department is still investigating how the lack of grounding was overlooked by the inspector back in 2005, a difficult task given that it’s been several years and the project inspector has since retired.

Since July the department’s inspectors, all “highly qualified” certified electricians, according to Sheridan, have been required to document inspections of private-public improvement projects in a field report. But in a few weeks City Light will take over the inspection process, a decision the department says was made in an effort to streamline the system. Read the full story at the Seattle PI.

As part of its work to rebuild the electrical system at Seattle Center, Seattle City Light has planned a six-hour power outage tomorrow, Tuesday, November 16, from 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m.

During this outage, Seattle City Light underground crews will be pulling out old cable and performing critical maintenance work on some of the automated switches.

The area affected by the outage will be between Mercer Street on the north, Denny Way on the south, 5th Avenue on the east and 1st Avenue on the west. City Light says all customers who will be affected by the planned outage should have been notified already.

City Light also says this should be the last planned outage for Seattle Center and the surrounding area for the rest of the year, though additional outages will be required in 2011 as the city continues with its systematic replacement of the aging electrical system serving Seattle Center and Lower Queen Anne.

For more information please contact Mark VanOss at (206) 684-3279 or email him at mark.vanoss@seattle.gov. Queen Anne-ers may also use City Light’s new website to find further information on future outages as they are happening.

I’m without a car this morning, so if anyone happens to be walking by the scene and snaps a picture, please send it in to tips@queenanneview.com. We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.

The construction is expected to continue for the same hours through Thursday, January 14, “As long as it doesn’t keep raining,” one of the SDOT employees told me this morning. Half of the sidewalk and street parking is blocked off between Boston and McGraw to accommodate the city’s large (and noisy) machines.

And as if that weren’t enough, it looks like City Light is stationed outside Inspire Pilates across the street, tinkering with their new sign.

Although parking may be sparse, both Inspire and the Dispatch are open for business today, so if you have exercise to do and mail to pick up, don’t be intimidated by the loud roar of the big machines, though you may have to park a few blocks down.

Crews will be working until 3 p.m. this afternoon between Blaine and Howe on Queen Anne Ave.

According to one City Light worker, the street lights they are trying to repair have been “out for some time,” and should be working again later today.

Remember to drive cautiously through the work zone.

“It seemed…fitting somehow,” he wrote.

The two outages today left several residents and businesses without power for most of the day, including, at some point, Seattle Center, the Space Needle and a number of local cafes and coffee shops (whatever will us Seattle-ites do without our caffeine fix!). Power is still out for some 500 people in Lower Queen Anne, which City Light hopes to restore by 8:40 tonight. Meanwhile, City Council voted to go ahead with a 13.8 percent City Light rate increase stating January 1, 2010.

Thanks to Chris for the picture!

There have been three power outages on Queen Anne over the last several weeks. The first was on Wednesday, September 16. The second was a scheduled outage on Saturday, September 26 to repair damage from the previous blackout, which led to an unplanned outage later that day. The third outage occurred the next day, Sunday, September 27, knocking out power to 10,000 in Queen Anne and Magnolia for much of the night.

For more information contact Mike Eagan at (206) 615-1691 or mike.eagan@seattle.gov.