Power outage means Cary parish celebrates Christmas by candlelight
A Duke Energy equipment failure left almost 2,000 Cary customers without power for a couple of hours on Christmas morning.
The outage covered an area of Cary from Chatham Street south to to SE Maynard Road, and from Kildaire Farm Road east to Walnut Street. It was first reported around 10 a.m., and Duke Energy had power restored by early afternoon.
At Christ the King Lutheran Church on Walnut Street, the 11 a.m. Christmas Day service went on as planned. A small crowd convened to celebrate the birth of Christ with daylight streaming in the windows and candles in hand.
"It's a little bit like the first Christmas, isn't it," asked Pastor Wolfgang Herz. "Unexpected, and we kind of have to make do, and maybe it's God's way to keep us humble."
Herz pointed out that the congregation in person still outnumbered those who attended the service online.
"That tells me that for Christmas people want to be in the place, they want to be in the space," he said.
"Celebrating, worshiping with other people strengthens my faith," said parishioner Leigh Poag. "It's just a happy place to be on Christmas morning."
In 2022, Christmas weekend power outage left half a million in the cold
With temperatures in the 50s and expected to reach the mid-60s on Monday, the impact of the outage is much less severe than when Duke rolling blackouts left about half a million people without power last year on Christmas weekend. On Christmas Eve 2022, rapidly plunging temperatures and a spike in demand for electricity which outpaced projections caused Duke to resort to rolling blackouts. Outages that should have lasted 15 to 30 minutes, instead lasted hours.
