By Brian McLaughlin
Nick Cinque, owner of Simple Pleasures on Sunrise Highway, said he heard a loud crash at the corner at about 11:45 a.m. on June 3. The crash came from the transformers on a nearby telephone pole being repaired by LIPA workers that morning. During the repair job, one of the transformers produced a sudden electrical flash, giving the employee up on the pole a minor burn and interfering with the power flow for a grid of buildings east of the corner.
Fortunately, the LIPA worker suffered no significant injuries. He refused medical attention, climbed back up the pole, and continued to work, officials said.
However, to some of the shopkeepers on the ground, the situation seemed much more severe. I thought [the LIPA employee] almost fried himself, said Jeff Greenfield of MGL Insurance. Cinque added, It looked like the transformers were catching fire.
The Lynbrook Fire Department was called but there were no fires for them to extinguish. For the most part, the situation with the transformers was under control. On the ground, though, things were not so calm.
The power flickered on and off for awhile, and then went completely out, said Pat Mayle of C&L Custom Plumbing, one of the roughly half-dozen business east of Denton Avenue on either side of Sunrise Highway that suffered a power outage from about 11:50 a.m. to 12:20 p.m.
The traffic lights at the intersection also stopped working. Lynbrook police began directing traffic, but some say the sudden cut-off in power had made the traffic situation quite chaotic by that time. People couldn't even cross the road, said Cinque. I had to go out there and try and direct traffic myself.
Cinque was one of the local proprietors who decided to close his store during the power failure. You just don't know what's going to happen when you have people in a completely dark store, said Cinque. It was safer to just close the doors.
Other stores, though, such as C&L Plumbing and Floorever Carpeting, kept their doors open during the outage. You can't run a business normally without power, said Lisa Pollack of Floorever Carpeting, But in a [temporary] case like this, you don't really have to close.
Store owners were forced to deal with problems with their automatic registers and computer systems, which ran into a number of errors because of the erratic flow of power. Our computers were still having problems late into the afternoon, said Greenfield. The loss of power also meant that all air conditioners in the area shut off, making the stores quite uncomfortable due to the high temperatures that day.
The problem was solved by the LIPA workers by 12:20 p.m., barely a half-hour after the power difficulties began. There were no traffic accidents and the businesses soon returned to normal.
