Power outage hits wide city area
By From staff reports
Published in News on December 24, 2014 1:46 PM
More than 1,400 Duke Energy customers, as well as early morning shoppers at Berkeley Mall and stores up and down Berkeley Boulevard, found themselves in the dark this morning after a tree limb fell on a primary power circuit behind an apartment complex on Hillcrest Drive.
The power outage forced JCPenney and the mall to evacuate customers and to secure the building until the power was restored, said Reid Gaines, JCPenney store manager.
"Everybody in what we call the Berkeley feeder area was affected," said Keith Westbrook with Duke Energy.
Westbrook said the Berkeley feeder area covers the neighborhoods and businesses on and surrounding Berkeley Boulevard.
The tree limb fell because of weather conditions around 8:30 a.m. and power was restored to customers around 9:10 a.m., Westbrook said.
City Manager Scott Stevens said the southern end of Goldsboro was sporadically without power throughout the night and early morning, but no major outages were reported.
JCPenney opened around 7 a.m. and the lights started blinking around 8:30 a.m. That caused the store's computers to go down, Gaines said.
Once that happened, customers were asked to leave the store because of safety concerns. There were about 20 to 25 customers in the store at the time of the outage, he said.
Since the computers were down, the store held merchandise for shoppers, Gaines said,
"We had one guy ask us if we didn't have a old-fashioned cash register," the store manager said.
Despite the inconveniences, shoppers appeared to be in good spirits and took the delay in stride. There were no problems, Gaines added.