East Marginal Way S. re-opened to traffic Saturday afternoon after more than two dozen power poles came crashing down the day before.
Both directions of East Marginal Way S. had been closed between 16th Ave. S. and S. Norfolk St. for investigation and extensive clean-up.
Several intersections will be without power for at least several days, and four-way stop signs are in place, according to Tukwila Police.
A downed power pole trapped two people in a vehicle near Tukwila and knocked out power to thousands on Friday afternoon. However, the other downed poles did not strike any other people or vehicles.
Emergency crews worked to safely extricate the two people trapped in an SUV once the power lines were deactivated. One person was taken by ambulance with non-life threatening injuries. The other person only had a superficial injury, according to Tukwila Police.
Crews worked through Friday night to clear debris and make repairs on East Marginal Way.
Seattle City Light transmission officer Bernie Ziemianeck said 24 power poles crashed on a mile-long stretch of E. Marginal Way S. That's now been updated to 26 poles, in all. It remains unclear unclear what caused the poles to come crashing down near the Museum of Flight, but officials are considering a strong micro-burst of wind.
Ziemianeck said, "Quite honestly, I haven’t seen devastation like this in probably the last 30 years of being in this business."
With so many poles and wires down, Ziemianeck said it would take days to get it restored.
"This is not going to be an easy task," Ziemianeck said.
A family that was inside the museum described the incident, "We were just in the Museum of Flight and walking by a window when we heard and saw a big explosion from the power line, a big flash of light, and it all came tumbling down. It was raining really hard at the time, so we don't know if it was an electrical storm or not. We all jumped from the explosion, half the power went out. We just stayed another hour and waited until we were told we could walk out."
Museum of Flight spokesman Ted Huetter described the initial response as "amazingly calm."
Shortly after 4 p.m. Friday, Seattle City Light reported 16,480 customers without power across parts of south and West Seattle. By 6 p.m., most of the power had been restored.
City Light says the internal standards committee will look at all the data to determine what caused the incident, and engineers will decide if they should rebuild the distribution lines in the same manner or make changes.
The exact age of all the poles wasn't available but several were replaced less than 10 years ago.