And suddenly, black, no more sound, no images. Bad surprise for the customers of UGC Ciné Cité de Vélizy this Saturday evening. At around 19:30 p.m., the staff invited them to evacuate the dark rooms and head for the forecourt. The 1,200 people calmly followed the instructions, a little chagrined to see their screening interrupted in this way.
The reason: a power outage that affected the cinema, but not only. The nearby Vélizy 2 shopping centre was partially affected. It couldn't have come at a worse time, 24 hours before Christmas Eve. At the Yves Rocher boutique, salespeople and customers were suddenly plunged into darkness.
"We closed the doors so that new customers wouldn't come into the shop and stayed with those who were shopping. Nothing was working anymore. It lasted about ten minutes," says a store manager.
Many customers to wait at the checkouts
The ready-to-wear store Mango suffered the same fate. "It was disabling, especially on a Saturday and a few hours before Christmas, even if it only lasted about ten minutes. We have tried to restrict flows despite the relentlessness of customers. We made them wait at the checkouts," explains a representative of the brand.
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On the other hand, the Jeff chocolate shop in Bruges was spared. "We had a micro-cut. It lasted just a few seconds. As a result, we have not been impacted," says a saleswoman. The same goes for the Carrefour supermarket, which has its own generators anyway. It has only suffered a few microcuts.
Enedis' teams intervened immediately. "Power came back on in less than an hour," the company said. The cinema was able to hold late-night screenings, according to one of the managers, "even though a second outage occurred at 00:30".