Outage leaves downtown Blaine without power

A faulted underground cable near Peace Portal Drive and Boblett Street left the majority of downtown Blaine without power on December 4. 

Gary McSpadden, operations and maintenance manager for Blaine Public Works Department, said an old cable burned out and shut down the grid about 5:30 p.m. December 4, one block east of Peace Portal Drive, in an alley off of Boblett Street. While public works doesn’t know what caused the cable to fail, McSpadden said it wasn’t due to inclement weather or nearby construction. 

Public works crews immediately responded to the call but it wasn’t until about 11 p.m. that they located the faulted cable. A few residents near the outage remained without power, and were hooked up to a generator the morning of December 5. 

“Crews were on site shortly after the call but unfortunately an underground failure takes a while to find and diagnose,” McSpadden said. 

A second outage occurred about noon on December 5 that lasted about 15 minutes and impacted downtown Blaine. McSpadden said a bad spot in the wire just south of the faulted cable caused the second outage. 

Public works finished its final repair on the cable about 7:30 p.m. December 5. 

The train crossing was down at Marine Drive just before the power outage on December 5, preventing people from leaving Marine Drive for about an hour. McSpadden said he wasn’t aware whether the power outage impacted BNSF Railway.