If you have a specific restaurant, diner or retail store you are planning to visit this Sunday, March 31st, in downtown St. Joseph you might want to double check to make sure that they will be open for business before you venture their way. Merchants have been querying one another all morning asking who among them has heard of a planned outage from Indiana Michigan Power Company that escalated from a planned four hour downtime to now at least 8 hours without power for a portion of the city’s central business district.
Particularly disturbed about the outage is Kathy Thornton at Thornton’s Home Town Cafe. She is understandably upset that the power outage will essentially wipe out her busiest day of the week and right at the beginning of Spring Break, to boot.
Thornton told fellow merchants today, “It may not affect your business, but it shuts me down for the entire day!” She adds, “Somehow, by the time they contacted me, they said that 90-percent of those affected said that Sunday would work best for them.” She later posted on the Thornton’s Facebook fan page: “Unfortunately, we will be closed Sunday, March 31st, due to a scheduled power outage by Indiana & Michigan Electric Co.”
G&M Variety’s Mary Nicola says her store was first told that power would be out for about 4 hours, but a follow up call said it would be off for 8 hours.
Thornton began the Facebook thread out of concern that it might be a hoax of some sort, but rapidly learned that it was a legitimate notification that the power would be out for an extended period on Sunday.
Daniele Crevier from St. Joseph Today confirmed that the organization’s Welcome Center got a call indicating they would be without power beginning at 8am and lasting at least 8 hours.
I&M officials tell me that the planned outage is slated for the downtown St. Joseph area this Sunday, March 31st from 8 AM – 4 PM and will affect 33 Indiana Michigan Power customers. They says that all impacted customers have been personally notified by I&M about this outage.
I&M’s Schnee Garrett says, “Crews will be replacing a power pole. The work is necessary to prevent an unplanned outage which could cause our customers to be without power for an extended period of time.”
