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Businesses affected by power outage

Most closed; pizza parlour made out well during power failure.

 

Most Summerland businesses rely on electrical power and had to shut down for the day during last Tuesday’s outage.

Medical and dental offices, lawyers and accountants, manufacturers and retail outlets were among those that had to close up shop.

One exception was a pizza business.

Ovens fuelled by natural gas and a portable electric generator kept Murray’s Pizza in business. In fact, Murray’s experienced an unprecedented boom in business during the long power outage, according to owner operator Josh Roberts.

“I am sure we fed half of Summerland,” he said. The natural gas ovens, used since the early 1980s, were the key to staying open. A former pizza driver arrived with an electric generator that powered the dough press, the lights and the “open” sign.

Other help came from the Murray’s store in Penticton which supplied additional dough to keep up with the demand.

“When the lights came on we had just a few doughs left,” said Roberts.

Summerland Sweets also stayed open through the outage, serving people who were out looking for something to do, according to general manager Len Filek.

No product was lost although there was no cooking done during the outage.

Skylights in the warehouse enabled workers to continue working with their jobs.

When the ice cream was starting to get a little soft around 4 p.m., the business closed up shop.

In many workplaces employees did what they could in spite of the outage.

The staff at Nesters Market came in for praise from company president Dan Bregg.

They stayed on the job and found useful work to do during the power outage.

The store lost the nearly eight hours of sales, but no food product was lost as a result of the outage.

Employees were getting ready to call it a day because of darkness when the power came back on.