PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A fire at Atlantic City Electric's Lake Avenue substation knocked out power to a large portion of Wildwood around noon Friday, lasting into early Sunday morning.
Wildwood police urged people to use caution while driving, as traffic lights were not working.
It’s unclear how the fire started, but it was contained by 1 p.m. No injuries have been reported.
As of 9:57 p.m. Friday, more than 9,000 customers -- indicated by hotels, companies and individual housing -- were impacted by the outage, according to Atlantic City Electric. Earlier in the afternoon, around 24,000 were affected. Just before 10 p.m., there were 26 active outages and a reported 8,000 customers' power had been restored.
Atlantic City Electric said power was officially restored to all customers by 4:24 a.m. Sunday. The company initially estimated power to be restored for 80% of residents Saturday afternoon, but that time was pushed back.
"As we restored service for our customers, some customers did experience additional service interruptions after their service was already restored," the electric company said. "This was to allow our operators to reroute power."
"Additional brief temporary interruptions may be needed as operators continue to balance customer energy demand across the system and as more permanent devices are brought back online. We will do everything possible to minimize any further impacts on our customers and the local community."
Vacationers like Todd Frick from Roxborough came down the shore to escape the city heat for the weekend but had to withstand the high temperatures and humidity for most of Friday.
"The supermarket's open, but there’s minimal power," he said. "It’s kind of a guessing game as to what has power and what doesn’t, so it’s hard finding food and our hotel didn’t have power so we had a delay getting checked in."
Related
John Donio owns Daytona Inn & Suites in Wildwood. He says the last 24 hours have been a challenge for his staff and guests, as well as the hundreds of other hotels, restaurants, boardwalk shops and stores who were left in the dark after the fire wiped out power.
"These are small business people, these are very mom and pop operations," Donio said. "These are hardworking people that have been affected. These are family businesses that have been affected and we really only have about 100 days to make our revenue, so to lose 24 to 48 hours worth of revenue, it may not sound like a lot to people, but it really is a big deal."
He says his staff has offered partial refunds, relocating guests and other arrangements. He’s hopeful for some normalcy the rest of the weekend and that the shoobies, also known as one-day beach goers, will still come.
"But you can still come and enjoy plenty of other attractions, the beaches. You can visit Cape May Harbor, you can visit the zoo that we have, a wonderful Cape May Zoo down here as well. There's plenty to do, family fun still for everybody. So come on down and don't worry about the rest of it."