Roseville Galleria has rare, short power outage due to car accident

Shoppers at the Westfield Galleria at Roseville had a very rare experience Monday, Dec. 22: The mall had a temporary power outage during the height of Christmas shopping. The culprit: A car hit a transformer at about 1:40 p.m. in the vicinity of the mall, knocking out power for about 40 percent of the shops in the mall and other neighborhoods nearby. Jeff Richardson, senior general manager of Westfield Galleria of Roseville, told the Roseville Press Tribune the mall is powered by Roseville Electric and the city was able to respond to the outage swiftly. "The city of Roseville has the ability to redirect power to the mall electronically, so they did that and we were back up in about 20 minutes. City of Roseville Electric is amazing," Richardson said. "So they saved Christmas," he said jokingly. Richardson explained the mall also has emergency power for lights in these situations, but since only about 40 percent of the mall was affected by the short outage, most shoppers stayed put and continued with their shopping. The outage demonstrated how well the system worked in a time of need, according to Richardson. "Everything is back to normal," said Richardson. "Come shopping!"