How Seattle City Light is preparing for future power outages

Heavy rain and strong winds are heading our way this weekend, and that means power outages could be next. Seattle City Light crews are already gearing up for falling branches and downed lines. FOX 13's Frankie Thompson takes us inside their service center to show how crews prepare before the storm hits. Before a single tree branch hits a power line, Seattle City Lights is already watching the forecast and setting its storm plan into motion. 24/7 South Service Center, every response starts in the warehouse. This is an insulator bracket right here. Warehouse supervisor Teresa Provito and her team keep thousands of transformers, wires, and parts ready for field operation crews to grab and go. A lot of people don't see the background of what happens in operations. You may see the trucks out there, but in the background for my crews is that. We provide the materials that they need to restore our power within the city. This wheel holds 8,000 pounds of wire that goes underground. It serves several parts of the city, including downtown and the high-rises. When an outage hits, a two-person field operations crew assesses the damage, calling in Supervisor Jonathan McCamey if it's a bigger job that requires additional crews. We get a lot of wind and rain, and there might be a branch that will fall on the wire, feed the wire, and it'll knock the feeder out. The feeder, you don't get power to the distribution. So we have to go out and patrol those feeders to see what caused the feeder to go out and then make the repairs as necessary. McKamey says once main feeders are fixed, crews restore neighborhood lines, all with safety first. We're out working. We want to be safe. We want to make the public safe. So we have to work in a particular manner. In order to keep our crews safe and the work doesn't stop when the lights come back on returning crews drop off salvage gear where warehouse staff sort through it to reuse, refurbish or recycle. Separating it by either brass, aluminum, steel, copper. With more wet weather moving in, standby crews are already scheduled on site through the weekend, ready to roll the second a call for service comes in. Frankie Thompson, Fox 13 News.