Businesses blacked out Sunday, cause unknown

MOSES LAKE — Restaurants and stores along North Stratford Road lost power Sunday afternoon, forcing some to close early for the day.

"The traffic lights were out and the buildings across the street didn't have any lights," said Kevin Donovan, store manager at Staples. He said the whole commercial block appeared to suffer a blackout from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.

"I know that Gottschalks, Big 5, McDonalds, Burger King, we were all without power," Donovan said.

Traffic lights at two intersections along Stratford Road — Mart and Valley Roads — were out due to the power loss, the Moses Lake Police Department reported.

"Officers provided traffic control long enough to get some temporary stop signs up," Capt. Jim Jenkins said Monday. "Just for a short period of time."

Yvonne Parker, store manager at Gottschalks, said the clothing store lost power about 3:50 p.m. They remained without electricity until 5 p.m., Parker said.

They were forced to exit customers and close the store early, Parker said.

"The power goes down quite frequently over here," Parker said.

Debbie Osborne, assistant manager at North Stratford Road Burger King, confirmed they restaurant lost power for about one hour Sunday.

Calls to the Grant County Public Utility District were not returned by deadline. The cause of the outage remains.