Service fully restored in Wildwood after substation fire knocked out power for days

WILDWOOD, New Jersey (WPVI) -- Thousands of customers in the Wildwood, New Jersey area were without power after a substation fire caused an outage on Friday.

Atlantic City Electric said more than 24,000 customers were initially impacted but as of 4:24 a.m. Sunday morning, the power was fully restored.

"Atlantic City Electric has restored electric service for all customers who were impacted by the fire at our Lake Avenue substation. Service for all customers was restored at 4:24 a.m. today. We thank our crews, operations teams and all the support personnel, including local contractors, who assisted in this effort. We also know this has been a challenging event for our customers and those who are vacationing on the island, and we thank them for their patience and understanding as we worked to restore service," said Atlantic City Electric in their final statement.

The company also said there may have been some brief temporary interruptions needed as they try to balance customer energy demand across the system and as more permanent devices are brought back online.

The company says the Lake Avenue substation in Wildwood had to be de-energized after a fire around 12 p.m. Friday.

The outage impacted customers in Wildwood and Wildwood Crest.

The fire was been contained early on, Atlantic City Electric said. The cause is not yet known and no injuries were reported.

Despite the absence of electricity, some businesses along the boardwalk continued to serve their customers over the weekend.

"The rides are closed, everything closed, we try to at least serve some people," said Gregory Zervas from Hot Spot restaurant.

Hot Spot served its customers in the dark, working off of its generator.

"We're trying to do our best," said Zervas. "We got a generator and everything is on gas."