BELFAST, Maine — With more than half of the midcoast city without power Monday morning, several shopkeepers remembered the Christmas Eve ice storm blackout as they encouraged people to come into their darkened stores.
Mallery Dalto of Yo Mamma’s rolled up her awning to provide more light for the tourists browsing inside, after the electricity on Main Street already had been out for about an hour or so.
“This is about the fourth or fifth outage this year,” she said. “We didn’t used to have them unless there was a big storm. On Christmas Eve, we told people to bring your flashlights — and your checkbooks.”
According to the Central Maine Power outage website, 2,469 customers in Belfast were without power, out of a total of 4,409, just before noon. Just down the coast, in Northport, 684 of 1,290 customers also were in the dark.
As cars tentatively crawled through the downtown intersection that usually is governed by traffic lights, several folks, who rely on electricity to get their jobs done, stepped outside to enjoy a moment in the sunshine or visited with friends in other businesses.
Susan Cooney, an artist who works downtown, said she was donating blood to the Red Cross when the lights and power went out at the VFW hall.
“They were not happy,” she said of the blood drive organizers. “They can finish the person who’s already started, but they can’t start processing anybody new.”
According to CMP spokesperson Gail Rice, the outage was reported at about 10:45 a.m. and was caused by a problem at a substation on Belfast’s west side. She said it initially affected more than 3,000 people in Belfast and Northport, but crews were able to reroute power to 684 customers at a little before noon. Power was restored to everyone by about 12:30 p.m.