A power outage left more than 4,500 people in Pottsville in the dark and shut off traffic signals downtown Saturday afternoon for nearly two hours.
"A circuit breaker at the substation tripped," Jim Nulton, a regional community relations director for PPL Electric Utilities, Harrisburg, said Saturday afternoon.
It was the PPL substation in the Fishbach section of Pottsville, Nulton said.
"It affected three separate circuits equalling about 4,500 customers. Three lines coming out of the substation were impacted and everybody was restored by 3:38 p.m.," Nulton said.
The outage occurred about 2 p.m. Businesses downtown were without power.
At 2:20 p.m., Peter F. Russo, co-owner of Roma Pizza at 116 W. Market St., was working the front counter at the restaurant. Even though the lights in the dining room were out, the customers were still in line for pizza.
Meanwhile, Danette Reidler, a circulation desk worker at Pottsville Free Public Library at 215 W. Market St., was checking out books the old-fashioned way.
"I'm writing down the bar codes to check things out," Reidler said.
"We're still open. And people are still coming in, wondering if our computers are working," said Ron Davenport, a circulation desk worker.
The computers were down, Reidler said.
"And when the power went out, I had a print job of 26 pages in there and one page was half in, half out," Reidler said.
At Mud & Maker at 6 S. Centre St., Amanda Ulicny, Pottsville, was painting a decorative plate she'd made from clay. She was planning to paint on the shop's second floor. But since the lights were out, she brought the paints out to the store's front entrance.
"It's nice out, so we decided we could paint out here," she said.
The weather was sunny with a high of 62 in Pottsville on Saturday, according to the website for the National Weather Service at weather.gov.
At 3:30 p.m., PPL workers were spotted at the Fishbach substation on the northwest side of the city just off Eagan Street, on the border of Norwegian Township.
At 3:15 p.m., the website for PPL Electric Utilities reported there were "4,572 customers out" in Pottsville.