County Government Flickers

For a little more than an hour Monday, Spokane County government stood still.

Traffic tickets couldn’t be cleared. Public records couldn’t be checked. Inmates couldn’t be booked. Judges couldn’t judge. Files couldn’t be recorded.

The three county buildings where all those things happen went powerless about 11 a.m. Washington Water Power officials blamed the outage on rain.

“Sudden water flushing dust into the system can have that effect,” said Jay Hopkins, a WWP spokesman. “In this case, it malfunctioned one of our feeders and the whole substation went down.”

As many as 250 other customers in a 10-block area near College and Wall went without power for about eight minutes, Hopkins said.

The courthouse, Public Safety Building and jail remained without power until just after noon.

At the jail, generators kept some power going, but lunch for the inmates was delayed.

Court hearings also were delayed and some phones went down temporarily. Officials said the outage did not cause significant delays or problems.

, DataTimes