Southern California Edison is reporting that over 840 customers in Palm Springs are affected by a power outage which began at 1:09pm today. Crews working on the equipment failure hope to have service restored by 5:09 this evening.
During prime time for business owners and one of the businest times of year for tourism, with visitors converging from all over the world for Dinah Shore Weekend and other exciting events this weekend, timing for the outage could not have been worse.
Especially affected was the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies at The Historic Plaza Theater on South Palm Canyon Drive. As today’s matinee was about to begin cast, crew and 2,000 audience members were left in darkness.
I was told by people leaving the theatre that everything was handled beautifully by the mangement. Dennis Goodman and Toni Brien traveled from Danville CA, said headliner Riff Markowitz kept the crowd calm and entertained until a safe evacuation from the darkened theater could begin.
Others couples from Long Beach and Loma Linda reiterated what a wonderful job Riff and staff did in considering the needs of the many elderly and physically-challenged attendees. I personally witnessed ushers and mangement leading groups to safety.
Restaurants and businesses were also hard hit, as the outage came during lunch time. Cooking came to a halt with many patrons leaving. Luckily, most were able to manually process credit card payments for those without cash.
Alex, a server, and Jose, the manger of Kalura Trattoria next to the Follies, offered theatergoers shade at empty tables and free ice water. Ben and Jerry’s was unable to make smoothies or milkshakes but continued serving hard ice cream which has an hour or two of shelf life. A couple from Denver here for the Brady-Jansen family reunion were in good spirits, buying cold beverages and hoping the show would go on this evening if power was restored. The Chief Operating Officer of Fisherman’s Market on Indian Canyon shared that they, too, had been affected, and hoped service would soon be restored.
Aaron at Peabody’s Restaurant offered a free drink to the full house prior to their departure. Mindy, owner of Zini Cafe and Zen American, shut down and hoped service would soon be restored. See’s Candy and other businesses had hand-written “Closed” signs on their doors. Jesse, a server at Cactusberry, told me the owners had purchased over $1000 worth of supplies in preparation for in season business and Street Fair this evening which would go to waste in about in hour.
The owner of Memento at 111 La Plaza told me there’s never a good time for an outage, but with this being a heavy tourist day the timing is even worse.
Other businesses affected were the Birkenstock shoe store whose manager Scott told me it was too hot for customers to stay, and with many visitors leaving downtown, there was a huge impact on their normally busy hours. Additionally, the street light at Tahquitz and South Palm Canyon is not functioning.