Christmas Eve power outage hits three big-box stores in Atwater Village
‘Twas the morning before Christmas, and all the HDTVs, Justin Bieber dolls and cases of discounted wine were hung on the shelves with care.
Then, kablooie!
A power outage shut down three big-box stores in Atwater Village on Friday morning just as desperate shoppers were converging for last-minute Christmas shopping.
“Uh, it’s closed?” a customer asked a Best Buy regional official, Pat McGann, who stood outside his company’s store on Los Feliz Boulevard patiently explaining that the store was, yes, closed until a generator arrived. This was about 1:30 p.m. The store had been set to open at 9:30 a.m. when the outage occurred at a power station serving just three stores: Best Buy, Toys R Us and Costco.
“Bad timing,” McGann said. “Really, really bad timing.”
Dec. 24, he said, is one of the five biggest shopping days in the holiday season, and the Atwater Village store is one of the five highest grossing stores in the chain. A lot of money was getting turned away at the door.
Terry Schneider, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the outage was probably caused by condensation that occurred when sunlight hit the power station after days of rain.
Costco opened about 12:30 p.m., using a rented, 1,500-kilowatt generator. Toys R Us opened on partial power by mid-day. The store was bathed in half-light, and employees were at the ready with flashlights as customers stood in long lines to pay. A manager would not comment, but it appeared the store lacked the power to run all of its registers.
That left Best Buy, where McGann was urging shoppers to go to the chain’s Burbank store, about seven miles away. Not everyone wanted to.
“They keep telling us to go to the other store, but I know that they have the TV I want in stock” in Atwater Village, said Oswaldo Martinez, 33, who was standing outside the store with his brother. They were getting the TV as a Christmas gift for their mother. He said he was going to wait “until they’re open.”
At 2:05 p.m., a shout went out that the generator had arrived. A truck from Duthie Generator Service pulled around to the back of the store, and workers almost instantly connected cables to Best Buy’s electrical box. At 2:10, store officials waited nervously for the power to be switched on.
“Please, please, please work,” McGann said.
Store employees cheered as the lights flickered on. Moments later, about 50 customers filed through the doors. And someone might have said “Merry Christmas.”
