CHENEY, Wash. — A “hiccup” in a power grid caused a power outage that covered almost all of Cheney and some surrounding areas early Tuesday morning.
The outage started around 2 a.m.
A team with the city’s lighting department said there was a short interruption from the area’s main power source to the city’s Avista power lines.
“It really was just a hiccup that that put a skip in the power circuit,” said Steve Marx, the department’s director.
For most people it lasted only 10 minutes, but some were in the dark for more than an hour.
Many Eastern Washington students had to wait outside their dorms while the power was out.
“We had to wait for the fire department to get there, check each floor. That took about an hour and a half,” said Diamond Thomas, a junior at the school.
The school’s power system sounds an evacuation alarm any time the building’s power goes out.
“We were all sitting there in the cold. Some of us didn’t have a blanket, and I had my dog,” Thomas said.
Some homeowners even experienced an extended outage.
“Out of nowhere, I heard a big ‘boom,’ personally,” said Chris Crawford, who lives near Yoke’s on 1st St.
He said after an hour and a half of wondering when the power would come back on, he heard the motors in his home start running again.
“I was grateful. It was 3:30 in the morning, and I was like, ‘I’m going to try and go back to bed and go to sleep so I can get to work in the morning,” he said.