Balloons cause power outage in Seattle

Around 7,000 Seattle City Light customers lost power on Capitol Hill Monday morning.

Seattle City Light reports the outage was caused by a bunch of Mylar balloons that came into contact with the power lines.

The utility’s Power Lines blog has warned of the dangers of mixing balloons and power lines in the past.

They recommend using small weights on balloon strings to keep them from escaping.

“Metallic objects are great conductors of electricity and should steer clear of power lines at all times,” they write on the blog.

Power was restored to all customers from the morning outage. But another outage impacting nearly 4,000 customers was reported later Monday. The cause was faulty equipment.