Wal-Mart, mall prepared for future

A bad spot in an underground cable left several big businesses in the dark more than once in the past few weeks, according to an Ameren representative.

“It was a major line, a few hundred customers were affected,” Ameren Representative Shirley Swarthout said.

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Customers on the circuit, including the Wal-Mart Supercenter and University Mall, most recently lost power June 27 for about 20 minutes and again the week before for at least 45 minutes, Swarthout said. Some customers mentioned several other incidents.

Carbondale Wal-Mart co-manager Tony Castiller said the store lost power June 29 for about five minutes and overnight between June 26 and 27 for 30 minutes.

“The power all around here was out,” he said.

University Mall General Manager Debbie Tindell said the mall lost power May 12 for 45 minutes and again May 31 for an hour in addition to the incidents mentioned by Ameren and Wal-Mart.

“We are concerned about the number and the frequency of these outages,” she said.

Swarthout said a bad spot in the circuit, not the power grid, caused these outages.

“The power grid is a network of high voltage transmission lines that run across the entire country,” she said. “These customers are on the same circuit, not power grid.”

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Swarthout added that Ameren meets the needs of all customers on a certain circuit, regardless of the size of the consumer or the number of customers.

“If something goes amiss, it affects everybody, including University Mall,” she said.

Although Swarthout said the problem has since been repaired, Wal-Mart and University Mall are taking precautions in case of future outages.

Tindell said that the mall has an emergency lighting system, but the registers are all operated by electricity.

“We don’t close the shopping center, but it is to the stores’ discretion as to whether they will complete transactions,” she said. “There is seating in the commons area available for those in the center.”

Castiller said Wal-Mart also has emergency lighting that is battery operated and that the registers will continue to run for at least 30 minutes after the outage.

The Supercenter also brings in refrigerated trucks for the frozen and cold items if the power is out for longer than two hours, he said.

“We do what we can to keep people safe,” Castiller said.