Black Friday has brought temporary blackouts to shopping malls in two area states -- the Christiana Mall in Delaware and The Mall at Short Hills in Millburn, N.J.
Around 10 a.m. reports began to surface on social media that the Christiana Mall had lost power.
Rob Guarino tweeted a photo of the dark food court on his Facebook page, saying, "A new meaning to Black Friday at Christiana Mall. Power is out. Stay calm and keep on eating."
The extent of the outage wasn't clear to folks inside the mall and according to Natalie Hines, the mall didn't communicate any information to shoppers like her who were left literally in the dark.
"So it really wasn't good for them," said Hines who was in the mall with her sister and mother, honoring their Black Friday shopping tradition.
True meaning of #BlackFriday here at the @ChristianaMall with the lights off! Continue the shopping!! Updates to come. — Natalie Hines (@NatalieHines1) Nov. 29, 2013
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"We were in The Limited and we just had to leave the clothes," Hines said.
Some stores pulled down their security gates during the outage, according to Delawareonline.com.
While we were on the phone with Natalie, the power flipped back on.
"Everyone in the mall is cheering," she said.
The mall put out a three-line statement to media at 10:38 a.m. which said they were experiencing a partial power outage. "JCPenney, Target, Nordstrom, Macy's and about 30 adidtional stores currently have electricity," according to the statement.
Within minutes, they posted to their Facebook page:
Electricity has been fully restored to the entire mall. We apologize for this brief delay in your shopping. Let the shopping Black Friday fun continue!!!
This was the second power outage at a mall this morning. Jersey Central Power & Light said a problem at one of its substations in Essex County cut power to The Mall at Short Hills in Millburn on Friday morning.
JCP&L spokesman John Anderson told The Associated Press the outage occurred at 6:58 a.m. and lasted about 10 minutes before power was restored.
The outage also affected parts of Summit, Millburn, Madison and Short Hills.
The cause is under investigation, and Anderson says crews are monitoring the scene.
According to its website, the mall was scheduled to open at 8 a.m. Friday.
