Shoppers in Foster Township Wednesday morning might have thought the blinking lights in stores had something to do with the holiday. Alas, that was not the case.

Penelec reported a downed wire in the woods in the vicinity of the 300 block of Seaward Avenue at 9:54 a.m.

“It’s way up in the woods and our line workers couldn’t detect an obvious cause with their binoculars,” said spokesman Todd Meyers. “About 1,400 customers had their power interrupted including 320 in Bradford City and the remainder in Foster Township.”

Restoring the power was quickly in the works.

“Fortunately, Penelec has remote-controlled switching devices on the line which can quickly reconfigure our local electric network to temporarily provide power to our customers from nearby power lines,” Meyers said. “That automated equipment allowed all customers to be restored within about 40 minutes without having to wait for repairs to be made.”

Losing power is never any fun. But some larger stores closed when the power went out — while people are trying to get Christmas shopping done.

“I can certainly understand the frustration of shoppers with everyone trying to get their last-minute shopping done with a handful of days to go until Christmas,” Meyers said.

“We are not sure at this time what caused the problem, since our focus was to isolate the damage, reroute power and restore power as quickly as possible to our customers,” he continued.

“Once our crews are in place and putting the wire back up, they’ll initiate a field investigation to see whether it may have been an equipment issue or possibly a tree branch contacting the line that brought it down,” Meyers said. “Our engineering group will assist as necessary in that investigation if the cause still isn’t immediately apparent to help us narrow things down.”

Power issues have been a common complaint in that section of the county. Residents have said power surges have caused damage to appliances on more than one occasion, the most recent of which was Dec. 3.

In that incident a large tree, not on Penelec’s right-of-way, fell on power lines, pushing a 34,500-volt power line positioned at the top of the pole against the 8,000-volt power line lower on the pole.

Any customers who sustained damage in the Dec. 3 incident should phone (800) 545-7741 to file a claim with Penelec.