For several downtown area restaurants, the President’s Day holiday workweek began Tuesday morning with a ground-shaking blast, and business for that day and the next was an absolute bust.
The blast at the corner of Canon Perdido and Santa Barbara streets was from an underground transformer that had been damaged by water seepage.
The business bust was the result of a power-outage that lasted until about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday, causing at least two restaurants to shut down completely.
All told, 22 customers lost power in an area bounded by Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara, De la Guerra and Garden streets, said Southern California Edison spokeswoman Jane Brown.
One of them was the Sojourner Café at 134 E. Canon Perdido.
“We haven’t been operating for three meals,” Donna Mudge, the restaurant’s co-owner, said Wednesday afternoon.
Mudge and general manager Brad Sherman said the restaurant stands to lose about $15,000, after adding up the costs of lost business, spoiled food and the rented generator.
Mudge added that her business also had to shut down about a month and a half ago, when an underground water main broke. (Edison’s Brown said she was not sure whether that incident was linked to Tuesday’s explosion.)
“We lost a day there, also,” Mudge said. “I don’t know who’s liable for this.”
Across the street, the restaurant Panino, 834 Santa Barbara St., also was closed Wednesday afternoon.
General manager Stephen Hoke said he was glad no patrons were sitting at the tables outside at the time of the blast.
“There was shrapnel and debris all over the place,” he said.
Meanwhile, at 831 Santa Barbara St., the Our Daily Bread bakery was running Wednesday, but only in a way that was half-baked.
Employee Leanne Marino said a generator allowed the bakery to stay open Wednesday, but wasn’t able to power certain things, such as espresso machines and credit-card swipers.
Brown said business owners can call the Edison claims department to see if they qualify for any sort of cost recovery, but she added that there are no guarantees.
“I tell you it really grieves us when people are without power for a long time and it affects their business and homes,” she said. “Almost everything we do is contingent upon electricity, and our poor business owners, it directly affects their bottom line.”
Brown said it wasn’t yet known what caused the leak, but added that the underground vault contained a “huge amount” of water.
For more information, call Edison’s main number at 800.655.4555.
