KIRKSVILLE, MO --
An afternoon fire in Kirksville left some Wal-mart shoppers empty handed.
The insulator between a power line and a utility pole behind the store broke, causing the pole to catch on fire. Ameren UE responded to the scene to repair the pole, leaving Wal-mart without power for about an hour and 15 minutes. We spoke with Manager Doug Nichting about the incident, who said they had several hundred customers in the store at the time.
“Our associates did an excellent job, they bought the customers to the front to ensure their safety and then because we had no way of checking them out, those that wanted to keep their items, we took their names and marked the carts, and everything else we returned to the shelf,” Nichting said.
Nichting tells KTVO they'll do a temperature check on all cold merchandise to make sure it didn't spoil while the electricity was off. He said they have had power outages before, but they weren't as unusual as this one.
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