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Published on 12/29/1999 All articles from this issue

Power failure leaves downtown in the dark

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By Linda Taaffe / Town Crier Staff Writer

Holiday shoppers found themselves in the dark last week when Los Altos merchants along two blocks of Main Street lost their electricity for the evening.

"It was disgusting," said Polly Werder, a saleswoman at Young Villagers at 248 Main St. The store staff was gearing up for the after-work shoppers - a busy period of the day - when the electricity went out.

Werder said the staff helped two determined customers already in the store finish their shopping with flashlights.

"One of them said 'I have to get this done.' We went around the store and looked at the tags with a flashlight," said store owner Barbara Hunter.

She had to pull out her old, manual credit card machine.

Despite the flashlights, Hunter said she had to close the store early, losing about $1,000 to $2,000 in potential sales. The power remained out for three hours.

"I don't think we can make up for lost business. Whoever was out for the night was out and went somewhere else," Hunter said.

The scene was similar along the two blocks between First and Third streets along the south side of Main Street.

Merchants closed early due to the outage and estimated losing tens of thousands of dollars in potential sales cumulatively.

Tom Collins, a spokesman for the Pacific Gas & Electric company said about 150 customers on the south side of Main Street lost their power at around 4:40 p.m., last Thursday, after an overhead connector on a power pole in the South Plaza failed.

He said about half of those customers regained their power at 5 p.m.

The remaining half didn't get their power back until around 8:30 that night.