Electrical power to Willow Cakes & Pastries was cut off around 9:30 Monday morning after a passing garbage truck yanked the service line out of the building.
“All of a sudden, I was upstairs and the whole building started to shake,” said Catherine O’Donnell, head chef at Willow.
“I look out and all I see is wires everywhere,” she said. “An environmental truck went through (the intersection) and he caught the wire.”
The truck was passing through the intersection at Mary and Mississagua Streets headed southeast on Mary as it passed the building and struck the wire.
“The truck hit our phone wire and our hydro wire and ripped all the hydro out of the building,” she said.
NOTL Hydro responded quickly after her son Sean called. “They were here within about 10 to 15 minutes,” O’Donnell said.
“A truck hit the line and unfortunately pulled the service out,” said Tim Curtis, president of NOTL Hydro.
NOTL Hydro has to work with the electrician at the customer’s location to co-ordinate and rebuild.
“Of course, you’re trying to do that as quick as reasonable so the customer can get power back,” Curtis said.
“Unfortunately, these things happen, so we try to get on them right away and get the power back.”
O’Donnell said the response from NOTL Hydro was impressive.
“The guy basically just said, 'This is our fault, it’s our wire, we’re calling an electrician' and the electrician was here within 20 minutes,” O’Donnell said. “Now it’s just a waiting game to get it fixed.”
All staff had to be sent home after the incident Monday morning and for the rest of the day Willow was only able to offer customers what was already baked and available to sell.
“Probably tomorrow we’ll have to close, too,” O'Donnell said. “Then we have to do inventory because the fridges, freezers, everything is off,” she said in an interview on Monday.
“So, we’ll have to start from scratch.”
Although this incident happened after the weekend, any business missed out on can hurt as shops like try to bounce back from the pandemic, O'Donnell said.
“We’ll find out once they get the hydro up if we’ve lost any equipment or if the damage is done internally. We won’t know until they turn it on.”
Willow was back baking on Wednesday.
