Black Friday hit by blackout

Stores lose power on year's biggest retail day

Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009

The lights went out on Black Friday shoppers around 1:30 p.m. on Friday and police were called to man the doors at Walmart in Prince Frederick and direct traffic between Route 4 at Route 231 for nearly an hour.

Manning the door at Walmart, Lt. Dave McDowell, supervisor of the patrol division for the Calvert County Sheriff's Office cleverly called it "blackout Friday" as he watched customers leave the darkened store without any items.

"They cannot do any transactions because the computer registers are all electric," McDowell said.

"We don't know at this time what happened," he said Friday, adding that he knew the outage was not caused by a traffic accident.

A Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) representative said Monday that several of the co-op's service areas were out of power last Friday afternoon due to high winds and hail.

"There was a storm that blew through with high winds," she said.

Tom Dennison, SMECO's media relations representative, said a tree fell and took out the Duke's Inn substation on Route 231, causing 574 customers to loose power from 1:22 to 2:13 p.m.

"Black Friday is what they said, [and] they really got a black Friday," said Joan Noland of Prince Frederick, who was going to purchase some items at Walmart on Friday afternoon, but wasn't able to due to the power outage.

Huntingtown resident Pamela Hall said, "I was the next one in line at the register," but she had to leave her cart — which had some Christmas gifts in it —and exit the store. The lights went off while she was waiting in line, but cashiers were able to ring up items for a few more minutes and then registers went down, she said.

About 15 minutes into the blackout a sales manager said the store decided to let customers place items on hold and leave their carts and then come back later to purchase them. A line immediately formed at the customer service desk to put items on hold.

One customer who waited to put her full cart of items on hold, Debbie McAdams, said she needed two of each item for her twins and couldn't find what she was looking for in Waldorf.

"We weren't going to leave without them," she said. McAdams, who lives in Whispering Woods in Prince Frederick, said she called her husband, who said the house had power. She said she was going to wait around town and come back later to purchase her items.

The power outage extended south to Westlake Condos and the Prince Frederick Shopping Center, leaving some hungry customers at The Greene Turtle searching for an alternative for lunch.

The restaurant had a few customers when the power went out, some of which left when they learned the restaurant couldn't cook a meal, said hostess Melissa Smoot.

"We couldn't make any food," said Smoot, but a few people stayed in the bar area and the power came on about 2:15 p.m.

Power was also out along Main Street north to Central Square plaza, closing Renegade Classics early for the day.

When the power came on, again customers roved the isles of Walmart in search of the Black Friday deals with no notice of the power outage an hour earlier.

charvat@somdnews.com

Local merchants reported

a good to average Black Friday

J Pink and Co., a fancy stationery shop in Sunderland, held its open house, featuring discounts and giveaways, the weekend before Thanksgiving at the request of customers, said store owner Jeannae Briscoe. While that event was successful, the day after Thanksgiving was no different from any typical Friday.

"It went really well. … We just decided not to do anything on Black Friday. We knew people would be going to the malls, Walmart and the bigger stores. The sales there were larger," Briscoe said.

Lisa Payne, owner of SeaScapes in North Beach, said her Black Friday sales were within $100 of last year's, and generally unimpressive, but Saturday sales were better.

She attributed the slow Friday sales to the lure of big stores and the lack of a coordinated effort among Beaches merchants to attract shoppers that day.

"Overall, the weekend was about the same as last year but business flowed a little differently," Payne said.

Maertens Fine Jewelry and Gifts in Solomons, on the other hand, had a very encouraging weekend, according to owner Heather Maertens.

"Things went very well. Black Friday is unpredictable for us. This year, it was really busy, really steady. A lot of people came in," Maertens said. "The general answer we got [from customers] was they didn't feel like fighting crowds and wanted to support local businesses."

In a way, the poor economy may even have helped by inspiring shoppers to help local stores pull though, she added.

ERICA MITRANO