ST. GEORGE — It lasted 10 minutes, which would be short by many standards, but a power outage on Bluff Street during St. George’s rush hour on Thursday morning caused backups on the street and left customers at Smith’s Food and Drug unable to easily get in or out of the store.
Rocky Mountain Power, in an email statement, said during maintenance work, a circuit breaker opened unexpectedly causing power to go out for more than 500 St. George Energy Department customers along Bluff between Sunset and at least 100 South. St. George City spokesman David Cordero told St. George News that St. George utility workers also assisted in getting power restored within 10 minutes.
The outage occurred right around 7:50 a.m., and by the strike of 8 a.m., everything turned back on – the LED video signs at Executive Plaza and UFirst Credit Union signaling power had returned with reboot screens.
In those 10 minutes before, however, commuters heading to work or taking their children to school were backed up at each traffic light. The Department of Motor Vehicles says that a traffic light out needs to be treated as a four-way stop, though an extra vehicle or two was seen going through the lights, despite traffic laws saying only one car should go at a time from each direction.
At the Smith’s, all the lights inside were out, all of the checkout counters were out, the entry automatic doors were shut and not functioning and the pumps weren’t working at the nearby Smith’s gas station.
LaRae Nelson and Lukas Cox, the hosts of “Lukas and LaRae in the Morning” on radio station Planet 105.1, happened to be outside Smith’s ringing the bell and raising money for The Salvation Army and “stuck together” wearing one ugly Christmas sweater.
“The doors shut,” Nelson said. “We saw the lights went out, the doors shut down and everything went dark.”
Added Cox, “One lady walked in and she couldn’t get in and looked and saw it dark and she asked someone walking in, like, ‘Is Smith’s open?’ And the lady was like, ‘Yeah, follow me.’ And she opens the door and just walked in.”
Robin Newport, a worker inside Smith’s, was busy trying to get the self-service registers back up and running when the lights came on but said the patrons inside took it in stride, even when the electronics did not.
“There were no issues,” Newport said. “Just the machines.”
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