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Power Restored At Christiana Mall After Second Outage Of Holiday Season

CHRISTIANA, Del. (CBS)— 'Tis the season when you hope a trip to the mall doesn't leave you in the dark.

"It's terrible at Christmas time," a shopper said.

"I was really surprised," another shopper said.

The lights are back on at Delaware's Christiana Mall after a partial power outage closed 100 stores and the food court for more than seven hours Wednesday.  For businesses and their employees, it was lost revenue and wages. The owner of Crumbs Cupcakes says closing cut their sales in half.

Things went dark about 45 minutes after this kiosk owner opened, and lights didn't come back on until 5 p.m.

"This was really a big problem for us today, we lost a lot of money," kiosk manager Tony Dageli said.

Power crews worked into the early evening focusing on a cable in the mall parking lot. This is the second time the mall lost power this season, blacking out for less than an hour on Black Friday (See Related Story).

"This is the second time it's happened recently, I was here the last time it happened," shopper Sally Preuitt said.

The mall's four anchor stores and a handful of others along with a few restaurants had power and remained open.

Santa even stayed through the outage entertaining all of the children who were waiting patiently for the lights to come back on.

The power company says they're still not sure what caused the cable to malfunction, but the problem has been fixed.

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