Friday the 13th lived up to its reputation last week as a power outage left many Oxford residents in the dark and led to fire in a popular downtown restaurant.
‘A circuit-breaker blew? at the Detroit Edison substation on East Street around 10:45 p.m. Friday, according to First Assistant Fire Chief Pete Scholz.
‘That basically knocked the power out to the village,? he said.
DTE Energy spokesman Scott Simons said the outage affected approximately 2,000 customers in Oxford.
Scholz said it appeared a ‘majority? of the village was affected, except for Oxford Lakes, along with portions of the township, south of Seymour Lake Road and as far west as Frederick or Spezia streets.
Power was restored by DTE workers around 3 am. Saturday, according to Scholz.
But the night was not over yet.
Shortly before 4 a.m., an alarm summoned Oxford firefighters to Casa Real, the new Mexican restaurant on S. Washington Street.
Scholz said when the power went out during business hours, employees spread candles throughout the restaurant including inside the restrooms.
When Casa Real closed and ‘everybody left,? Scholz said, ‘Somebody forgot to go into the men’s room and check? on the candles.
A candle left burning on top of a plastic toilet paper dispenser in one of the men’s stalls caused a fire, according to the assistant chief. After burning the toilet paper and its dispenser, the flames ‘went up the wall and started to come across the ceiling.?
Fortunately, the sprinker system kicked on and ‘put the fire out,? Scholz said.
‘That sprinkler saved the whole building from going up, which would have been a catastrophe at that point.?
Scholz characterized the fire damage as ‘extremely limited? and estimated the cleanup/repair cost to be about $5,000. He noted Casa Real immediately called in a restoration company and the restaurant was open for business by noon Saturday.