Back to Business for Wayne Avenue Shops After Transformer Explosion

By Wednesday morning, most of the shops and restaurants on North Wayne Avenue that lost electricity after Monday’s underground transformer explosion were open and ready for business. According to PECO spokesperson Greg Smore, only two businesses remained, with only minor repairs left to perform before they would be back on the grid.

Smore says 14 businesses lost power when an underground transformer exploded in the basement of the Suburban Building, blowing out the storefront window and damaging surrounding buildings. Upon arrival to the scene at 100 North Wayne Avenue, responders cut power to 80 more businesses to safely investigate the explosion.

“An underground cable was discovered to be defective,” said Smore. “We had to dig into the ground and find out how much needed to be replaced.”

Radnor officials tackled the uneasy task of managing the intersections and school crossings while the traffic lights were shut down for most of Tuesday, but it was up to the private businesses to decide if they could manage an unexpected day off without any paying customers.

There wasn’t much restaurants such as Christopher’s could do to avoid keeping the doors locked, not without risking losing perishable inventory.

“We were ready to open Tuesday morning, but the power went out at 10:45 a.m.,” said Alex MacDonald, general manager. “We packed up the food and sent it to the Malvern location.”

Many retail shops managed to keep the lights on, and the ones that went dark welcomed customers anyway. The most notable moment of Tuesday’s strange day on North Wayne Avenue is a photo captured by an employee at Christopher’s showing the owner of Pat’s Barber Shop setting up one of his customers on the front sidewalk and giving him a haircut.

As one commenter put it, “Pat is so old school! A little lack of electricity isn’t keeping him down!”