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Golden Mile Complex along Beach Road suffered a weekend power outage that lasted more than 35 hours from Mar. 5 to 6, 2022, which deprived shops of revenue and destroyed inventory.
The cause of the power outage is suspected to be a short circuit in the power supply, however, there has been no confirmation.
Food vendors and customers were caught off guard on Saturday as the lights, air conditioning and refrigerators stopped working at the venue en masse.
Affected businesses
According to Shin Min Daily News, a mookata (Thai barbeque) restaurant manager, with the last name Wang, said the power outage occurred at 11pm on Mar. 5.
Image via Shin Min Daily News.
He added that there was no power in half of his restaurant, while his kitchen was in complete darkness.
Despite the lack of electricity, the restaurant had to operate for another four hours until its closing time at 3am.
Unfortunately, the power outage lasted longer than expected.
On Sunday, Mar. 6, the power supply was still not restored.
This resulted in the restaurant's refrigerator to stop operating altogether.
Food stored inside the refrigerator started to go bad, it was reported.
Wang added that seafood like crab, shrimp, prawns and shellfish were all damaged due to the lack of refrigeration.
Meat was also no longer fresh and the ice cream had melted. As a result, they had to throw all the food away.
Image via Shin Min Daily News.
Food thrown away
About 30 packets of ingredients were discarded and the restaurant experienced a loss of more than S$6,000.
To make things worse, it had to spend about S$4,000 to replace the ingredients lost.
Wang added that because of the electricity outage, the shop was unable to accept electronic payment methods.
Because of this, groups of customers left without paying because they had no cash on them.
Customers also complained that there was no air conditioning because of the power outage.
Another Thai restaurant was also adversely affected.
The owner, who has been running a shop in Golden Mile Complex for over five years, told Shin Min that a part of the restaurant and his kitchen had no power supply.
He added that this caused the business to decrease by 20 per cent.
Shin Min also reported that many other shops on the second floor were similarly affected, including at least four restaurants, a hair salon, a skincare products store and the supermarket.
Some businesses continued functioning in the dark.
The supermarket operated without electricity and some restaurants lit candles in the kitchen so they had some light to cook.
Image via Shin Min Daily News.
Affected homes
Some apartments above the shopping mall were also affected by the power outage.
Image via Shin Min Daily News.
A resident on the 10th floor, with the last name Chen, told Shin Min that there was a sudden power outage at his house at about 1:30am on Mar. 6.
Chen went out of his apartment to check on the other units and found the corridor in darkness. He added that half of the 10 units on his floor had power while the rest didn't.
Because of the power outage, he said his home was too hot to sleep in so he decided to stay at a hotel for S$150 that night.
The power outage lasted till Monday morning.
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Image courtesy of Golden Mile Complex/FB and Shin Min Daily News.