NORTHAMPTON – Businesses along King Street were without power for a little over an hour Monday.
Power went out at 10:53 a.m. for customers along King, Barrett, Damon and Jackson Streets, according to Robert Kievra, a National Grid spokesman. Four Northampton Police officers directed traffic during the outage.
A preliminary review of the outage indicates an equipment failure at the King Street substation, Kievra said in an email.
Loading groceries into his car shortly before noon, Hatfield resident Stanley Pitchko didn’t let the power outage stop him from doing his errands at Stop & Shop.
“You could see things,” Pitchko said of shopping in the darkened store. “I knew what I wanted.”
Lights at the registers and the registers themselves still worked while most of the store remained dark.
Refrigerated cases around the outer ring of the store where many of the fresh and frozen food items are kept were roped over or covered in plastic. Some cooler shelves were completely empty while some employees worked to clear others.
Down one darkened aisle, a man could be seen using his cellphone flashlight to finish his shopping.
Outside of the Great Clips a few doors down from the grocery story, stylists Kylie Patrick and Daphne Holland waited for the power to be restored.
The pair said they were outside because it was warmer than back inside the salon.
“It’s freezing,” Holland said. “It’s like a refrigerator in there.”
The pair said they had tried calling National Grid but the lines were busy.
Luckily neither was cutting hair at the time the power went out. They said one person who had checked in online for a haircut said he would come back.
Driving along King Street, stoplights and lights inside businesses could be seen turning on at 12:01 p.m.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.