PEWAUKEE — High winds knocked out power to tens of thousands of people across southeast Wisconsin on Friday, snapping power lines and forcing businesses to close during one of their busiest days of the week.
In Waukesha County alone, outages peaked at more than 27,000 customers without power by midday Friday. On Pewaukee Road in Waukesha, several power lines were down — snapped at the base, with some split in half.
Plaza Garibaldi, a restaurant in Pewaukee, was among the businesses hit by the outages. For a restaurant that draws large crowds on Fridays, especially during Lent, the timing could not have been worse.
Server and manager Kaylee Martinez said the restaurant was forced to shut down for hours.
"It gets pretty crowded like you can't even walk like you got plates going on out here," Martinez said.
Watch: Local business loses power as high winds impact tens of thousands across Southeast Wisconsin
With no power, the restaurant faced the threat of losing a fresh shipment of produce that had arrived less than 24 hours before the outage, along with refrigerated drinks and food.
"This is one of our biggest fridges right now because it has all of our fresh waters, like the Aguas Frescas, Horchata, Jamaica, it's probably going to go bad," Martinez said.
Several servings of salsa were also at risk.
"Well we don't know whats going to happen, maybe the food is going to go bad and that's just money lost on the merchandise we just bought," Martinez said.
Martinez said the financial impact was unavoidable.
"We're probobly going to see a difference in sales, especially today, so there's going to be a little down on that you know?" Martinez said.
We Energies crews worked throughout the day to restore power across the state. In an email, a We Energies representative said the company had been restoring power to tens of thousands of customers since Friday morning and that all available crews would continue to work until power was fully restored.
Plaza Garibaldi had power restored by late afternoon and was open for dinner service.
This story was reported on-air by Brendyn Jones and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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