GREENFIELD — At least 110 customers lost full or partial power in downtown Greenfield Friday afternoon as the result of damage on an underground cable.
Wilson’s Department Store closed at about 4:30 p.m., after learning from Eversource that the damaged cable probably wouldn’t be fixed until after the store’s 5:30 p.m. closing time. Before closing, sales clerks had to give handwritten receipts to customers, because the electronic cash registers weren’t working.
For a while, Greenfield Community Television had partial power and was able to broadcast on one of its two servers, but then lost power. By 5 p.m., employees were able to run only low watt technology, disrupting their business.
“For us, we’re a little upset because we couldn’t finish what we needed to finish,” said Fundraising Associate Philippe Simon. “Friday is a really busy day for us because we have to prep all of the shows for next week.”
Simon said he avoided using anything that requires a lot of energy for fear of losing power completely. The station’s employees estimated needing to stay at the office until midnight to complete their work.
Magpie Restaurant, the Arts Block and Greenfield Garden Cinema were among some of the businesses hoping that electric power would be restored on a busy Friday night, when many more people than usual may have been in town because of the Green River Festival. The Arts Block continued to operate, while Garden Cinema closed early.
Design Nails had limited power, with one fairly steady light allowing them to continue working. However, employees said their business was affected because they couldn’t use certain instruments, such as the nail dryer.
“No lights, no life,” said Design Nails employee Mary Ngyen.
At about 4:47 p.m., Eversource spokeswoman Priscilla Ress said the company has crews working to find the damage on the underground cable, “so we can repair it and fully restore power. The outage is just in downtown around Federal and Main Streets,” she said. “We have over 100 customers affected, although most have partial power. We’ll have a better idea when power will be fully restored, when we locate the damage.”
At about 5:30 p.m., 111 Greenfield customers were without power, according to the Eversource power outage map.
