Mystery power outage in James St, New Farm, Fortitude Valley and Teneriffe

Power was slowly being restored to parts of Brisbane’s inner city suburb, including a prestige shopping precinct.

Shoppers in James St at Fortitude Valley have been caught out by a mystery power outage. File picture: AAP Image/Richard Walker

More than a thousand people were left without power on Friday after an unknown outage hit parts of Brisbane’s inner city suburbs including a prestige shopping precinct.

About 1100 customers were affected in the New Farm area with Energex unsure of what has caused the outage.

However by 2.45pm power had been restored to the majority of stores and restaurants.

About 170 customers were affected in the Fortitude Valley and 184 in Tenerife.

Earlier all of the James Street shopping precinct was without power.

Shops started to close while others just sat without power.

Silk Laundry staff member Carla Binotto said the team were tossing up whether to close for the day.

“We have had no power for the past hour or so. We aren’t too sure what has happened we thought we were going to get an update at 3pm,” Ms Binotto said.

“We are letting people browse but it is so dark down the back you can’t even try things on in the changing rooms.”

Meanwhile a worker from Messina said they were trying to keep their stored ice cream cold in their back fridges.

Meanwhile a Lululemon store on James Street had temporarily shut at 2pm, with the store team putting a sign on their door: “We are closed for the moment as power it out”.

Skincare and beauty store Rationale had closed their James Street store for the day.

A sign on their front door read “Closed due to power outage - sorry we missed you! Back 9.30am Saturday”.

Elevators into the Calile Hotel were stopped with guests of the hotel waiting to head upstairs.

Alex and Eleni had been staying in the hotel for a few nights and were due to head home on Saturday.

The pair were among the guests waiting in the lobby to head upstairs in the elevators.

“We thought we might as well wait it out at the moment we are up a few levels,” Eleni said.

“We don’t know what has happened but I’m sure it will come back on soon.”

Restaurateur Simon Gloftis, behind venues such as Hellenika, SK and Sunshine, said “these things happen”.

“Our customers understand and are just considering it a good excuse to enjoy another drink and relax until everything is switched back on,” he said.