By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 11, 2008

The lights went out suddenly at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City last night, catching some customers in mid-transaction.

Power went out at the 170-store mall in Arlington County about 7 p.m. and was restored at 9 p.m., near closing time at the multilevel retail and dining center, authorities said.

At McDonald's in the food court, some people had placed orders but were unable to settle up.

"Some people couldn't pay because there was no power," said Miguel Sanchez, manager of the fast-food restaurant. "We just ended up giving them the food."

Sanchez said that people were "a bit scared" but that they left the mall in an orderly fashion.

Emergency spotlights in the central court lighted the way to exits.

Some food-court customers stayed at their tables a few minutes, Sanchez said, but gave up when it became apparent that the power wouldn't return right away. Arlington police said they had heard of no problems.

Richard Zuercher, spokesman for Dominion Virginia Power, said a switch that had tripped on a 34,500-volt cable on mall property caused the outage. But why the switch tripped was not completely clear, Zuercher said. Les Morris, spokesman for mall management, said he understood that an auto might have knocked over a transformer near the mall.