Diners ate by candlelight Friday at Rajun Cajun’s after an equipment failure on a light pole at the intersection of U.S. 98 and Mississippi 13 knocked out power.
The Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association had four bucket trucks on the scene, and crews had service restored within about an hour and a half.
The outage happened around 6:45 p.m., diners and employees at the restaurant said.
Jerry Tolbert and his family were walking inside when his daughter, Jasmine, pointed to a fire on top of the pole. She was the first to see it, and people began scrambling to move their cars from underneath it.
Just as they got away, they said they heard three explosions back to back.
“It was like a fireworks explosion. Like bombs,” Lisa Ledet, owner of the restaurant, said.
Kurt Brautigam, spokesman for PRVEPA, said an insulator on the pole failed, creating a fault that resulted in an outage to 64 member locations in that shopping center and a short distance to the east along 98.
He said the safety equipment along the line acted as designed and limited the extent of the outage.
He said they got the first call at 6:49 p.m. and service was restored along 98 to 37 consumers by 7:24.
Utility crews cut off the burning top of the pole around 7:45 as employees watched from inside a back door of Rajun Cajun’s.
Brautigam said the remaining 27 customers in the shopping center were back on by 8:22.
Pictured Above: A worker from the Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association cuts the burning top off a light pole Saturday night at the intersection of U.S. 98 and Mississippi 13. | Photo by Charlie Smith
