Saturday, September 26, 2009                For more information contact:

For Immediate Release                             Greg Stewart @ 248-7160

FAIR LOSES POWER FOR SHORT TIME SATURDAY AFTERNOON

            Power to State Fair Park, home to the Central Washington State Fair, was disrupted this afternoon around 5:30 p.m. and remained off until about 6:15 p.m.  According to Fair officials the event, in its second day of a ten day run, was within 15 minutes of totally shutting down and having the grounds shut down when the power was restored.

            “We were looking at having a huge crowd of people here on the grounds with no power and darkness approaching,” said Greg Stewart, Fair President and General Manager.  “For safety reasons we were looking at having to evacuate the grounds.”

            Stewart said that fortunately that none of the amusement rides were affected by the power outage because the rides are powered by generators.  So, even through the power outage, the rides remained operational.

            Fair officials were praising the quick work of Pacific Power for getting power restored to the 120 acre fairgrounds. 

            “We would have hated to have to close down for the night,” Stewart said.  “We had a big crowd on the grounds for the sprint cars and to see Phil Vassar.”

            The country singer’s concert, and the car races went off without a hitch however, and the rest of evening it was fair activities as normal.

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