The Kemmerer area experienced a big increase in traffic last weekend as tourists continued to travel north to view the solar eclipse.

But local businesses that were looking forward to an eclipse tourism boost suffered because of the lack of electricity.

On Saturday, August 19, the power in Kemmerer and Diamondville went out at approximately 11:00 a.m.

The power wasn’t back on until 2:30 p.m that afternoon.

On Sunday, August 20, the power was out again in the area from about 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

A Rocky Mountain Power representative said the power outage on both days was the result of a circuit breaker failure in a Kemmerer power substation.

According to the representative, the outages affected 2,086 customers each day.

Laundry day had to be postponed. Families grilled outside to cook their meals.

Ridley’s Market was forced to close.

Several restaurants had to shut down for both breakfast and lunch.

Without electricity, local gas stations struggled to satisfy the large numbers of tourists coming through town.

Rocky Mountain Power has a website with current updates and information about local power outages.

The site, rockymountainpower.net/ed.html, also provides an estimate of when power in the area will be back on.

“There couldn’t have been a worse weekend for this to happen,” said a Kum & Go employee.

“We had to write down cash transactions and use the key every time we needed the cash register.”