Mount Barker Centre shopping centre without power for hours following tree branch incident

About 1000 homes and businesses have lost power in Mount Barker after a tree fell on power lines, plunging a shopping centre into darkness.

Power is out at Mt Barker mall, leaving stores in darkness. Picture: Jes Grace

Mount Barker’s main shopping centre was plunged into darkness for nearly two hours and most of the stores closed down after a tree branch fell on to power lines on Friday.

About 1000 customers across the town lost power on Friday morning for nearly two hours before it was restored just before 1.20pm.

Around 60 retail outlets in Mount Barker Central were affected by the outage and the majority of stores were shuttered early Friday afternoon.

Power is out at Mt Barker mall, leaving stores in darkness. Picture: Jes Grace

A Mount Barker Central spokesman said the centre’s power was supplied by two grids, one of which had “gone down”.

“The grid that is in failure supplies the main shopping centre in the mall. Across the Hutchinson Street side of the centre, where we’ve got standalone shops, they’ve still got power and still operating as normal,” he said.

Power is out at Mt Barker mall, leaving stores in darkness. Picture: Jes Grace

Power is out at Mt Barker mall, leaving stores in darkness. Picture: Jes Grace

Some of the larger stores such as Kmart or Coles also remained open throughout the outage due to back-up generators.

SA Power Networks crews restored power to the centre just before 1.20pm

An SA Power Networks spokeswoman said a tree branch had fallen on power lines, disrupting supply.

SA Power Networks’ outages map says 975 customers were affected.

A spokesman for the centre said the majority of shops have reopened once power was restored.