POWER RESTORED TO MALL
HNN Staff

The Huntington Mall will be open for business as usual today.

Normally that isn't newsworthy, but last night, the mall, and numerous nearby stores were part of 375 American Electric Power customers that had their power cut for more than an hour.

"They asked us to wait outside the stores," Linda Dylan, of Huntington. "They got lights on in the mall, but not all of the stores had power or phones."

Those lights were powered by emergency generators. But the mall remained closed until normal power resumed

AEP officials blamed the outage on a thunderstorm that rolled through Cabell County and knocked over a tree into a power line near Applebees.

"The storm came in furiously, said Bill Aames, of Ona. "We were in the parking lot and ran into Lazarus. Then it was 'Lights out.'