Some 6,000 people in Steilacoom will be without power for 12 hours Wednesday as the town’s utility company performs maintenance on the lone substation that feeds electricity to its 2,600 or so households.

Town Administrator Paul Loveless says maintenance and repair on the substation’s transformers is required about every decade. The last time Steilacoom performed the scheduled work on the Bonneville Power Administration-owned substation was 1998.

Steilacoom Power & Light is a relatively small utility that doesn’t have the ability to feed power to parts of its grid while crews work on the substation, Loveless said.

He added that ferry service between Steilacoom and Anderson Island shouldn’t be disrupted. The ferries have their own power source, he said.

Workers will cut power at 8 a.m. Wednesday, and if everything goes as planned, power should be restored no later 8 p.m.

Carroll Simpson, owner of Artistry in Wood in Steilacoom, says the outage will shut down his business, as some of the tools he relies on to produce his wooden creations require electricity. He plans to take the day off.

“It’s not going to be a serious problem, but the timing could have been better,” he said, referring to being without electricity during the hot summer months. “We’ll just take it as a vacation day.”

The town issued a list of tips people are encouraged to follow to prepare for the outage:

 • Locate and know how to operate the manual override mechanism for electric garage door openers.

 • Turn off all appliances except the refrigerator, the freezer and one light.

 • Turn off the oven and the range to avoid accidental burns when power is restored.

 • Keep freezer doors closed. If the freezer is only half full, food will remain frozen for about 24 hours. Check all food and throw out anything that doesn’t look or smell right once power is restored.

 • Use hot water sparingly if you have an electric hot water tank.

 • People with backup generators should keep in mind that they can be dangerous for utility crews. For people who want to connect generators to the existing system, they must get their installations inspected by town officials.

 • Those with home alarm systems should contact their monitoring companies and tell them the expected time of the outage.

 • For households with sewer grinder pumps, officials recommend manually pumping down the wet well prior to the outage.

 • Turn on power gradually once power is restored. An immediate, heavy demand for electricity after an outage can damage equipment.

Anyone with questions should call Steilacoom Public Works at 253-581-1912.

Brent Champaco: 253-597-8653