Party goes on when power goes off

November 23, 2008 07:52 am

— NORTHUMBERLAND — A few Northumberland residents weren’t about to let a malfunctioning PPL Electric Utilities cable pull the plug Saturday on their tailgate party for the Penn State football game, despite the three-hour power outage that resulted.
Instead of sitting in the dark at the Front Street Station eatery, the Nittany Lions faithful rallied to locate several candles to the light the bar and landed a gasoline generator from W&L Subaru to power the flat-screen television. The beer, accessible by hand-operated taps, still flowed freely.
So as local police and fire police directed traffic at Northumberland’s two busy intersections until power was restored, the group of 12 locals and six eatery staff were able to enjoy Penn State’s first touchdown shortly before 4 p.m. while thousands of other residents couldn’t.
By the time the Nittany Lions scored again — 10 minutes later — power was restored to the nearly 3,500 customers in Northumberland and Point Township, Northumberland County.
Donald Stringfellow, a PPL spokesman, said the outage occurred at 11:30 a.m. when an underground cable coming from a substation near Route 147 failed. The delay, according to Stringfellow, was due to the time it took PPL crews to locate the cable. Crews restored power at 3:55 p.m. by switching electricity around the cable. The cable will be repaired at a later date, Stringfellow said.
According to Terry Brouse, manager at Front Street Station, handling the power outage was simply a matter of reverting to basics.
“We were a little concerned about losing some food, but we made due with what we had available,” Brouse said. “Luckily, our stove and oven are gas (powered) so we could still cook. We put candles at every table, and our cooks worked under flashlights.”
Brouse said the staff even made coffee from boiling water, then pouring it over ground coffee, since none of the coffee makers or microwaves worked.
“It was pretty much going back to the old days,” Brouse said. “It didn’t matter, because we were business as usual here. We even made sure the game was going to be on.”
-- E-mail comments to jnorth@dailyitem.com.

Photos

Penn State football fans Greg Zimmerman and Dawn Skiles, both of Northumberland, watch Saturday?s game by candlelight at Front Street Station in Northumberland. While most of the borough was without electricity because of a power cable malfunction, the restaurant made use of candles and a generator to quench the fans? thirst for the game.