December 6

Power Restored After Brief Outage

Electrical power was restored to residents of Willow Mills early Saturday morning after a transformer failed Friday evening plunging the entire town into darkness.

The failure came after a power surge brightened then dimmed holiday decorations throughout the town at about 8:30 Friday night. Rural Electric spokesman Howard Biggs was unable to pinpoint the cause of the power outage, but postulated that the energy draw of holiday lights is much higher in the village this year than in previous years.

“With Millennium decorations as popular as other holiday lights, we are seeing a 30% overall increase in power consumption over previous years,” said Biggs. “It is an extraordinarily bright town this year.”

A lack of power did not dim the holiday spirit, however, as bands of carolers emerged on the streets with flashlights and lanterns offering to escort shoppers to their cars, and stopping at nearly every home to offer candles to shut-ins.

Fire trucks were pulled out of the fire house and stood idling in the street for the duration of the outage, but only one emergency call was received when Lola Neidig went into labor and had to call her husband at the firehouse to take her to the hospital. The Neidigs are proud of their 7-pound 8-ounce son, Jonah, who was born at one minute past midnight on Saturday morning.

“Somehow it seems appropriate that he was born during a blackout,” says proud father John Neidig. “But that’s another story.”

Power was restored at 12:27 Saturday morning.