Fire sends service providers scrambling

A fire at Fisher Plaza disrupted television and radio stations that broadcast from the building near Seattle Center and affected a server farm that provides service to multiple Web sites.

The small fire broke out around 11 p.m. Thursday in the basement of Fisher Plaza at an electrical vault — the section of the building where city power lines meet the building's transformers, said Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen.

The fire forced the evacuation of the building and disrupted the late-night newscast, said Rob Dunlop, vice president of operations for Fisher Communications.

KOMO Radio and KOMO-TV are broadcasting today from remote locations.

Crews were working to get the building back on line, officials said.

Connie McDougall, spokeswoman for Seattle City Light, said power was restored to everyone on the same electrical feeder grid by 3 a.m. today. But power was intentionally left off at KOMO so its engineers can make appropriate repairs to the station's equipment.

Dunlop says he hopes stations can resume operations in the building later today. The stations affected, which remain on the air, include KOMO-TV and KUNS-TV, and KOMO, KPLX and KVI radio.

Dunlop said he has no official word on what caused the fire.

The small fire also affected a data center in the building, disrupting service to multiple Web sites and other Web services. How many Web sites experienced problems because of the fire is not clear yet.

Verizon Communications Inc. spokesman Jon Davies said the company's DSL service in the Seattle area was temporarily disrupted.

Another company affected was Authorize.net Holdings, based in Marlborough, Mass. The company provides credit card services for more than 238,000 online merchants.

Authorize.net was unable to process credit-card transactions for a number of hours, and its Web site was down Friday morning. Both were back up by Friday afternoon. A few services such as its customer-information manager were still offline midafternoon Friday.

It's unknown how many merchants using Authorize.net were affected.

The company is keeping customers updated through its Twitter account (twitter.com/AuthorizeNet).

Online news site TechFlash said the Fisher Plaza data center had experienced a power outage last year, with service going offline after an electrical fire.

At Sport Restaurant & Bar, a sign on the door said the restaurant will be closed this weekend due to the power outage, but will reopen Monday afternoon for dinner.

Blogger Kyle Mulka (blog.kylemulka.com) is keeping a list of Web sites affected or seemingly affected by the fire, including Bing Travel, Bartell Drugs and Mars Hill Church.

Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said the blaze was extinguished in about 10 minutes.

"It sounds like the repercussions were bigger than the actual incident," she said.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Seattle Times staff reporter Jennifer Sullivan and Janet I. Tu contributed to this report.