GALVESTON -- A large chunk of Galveston was without power Tuesday night after a power switch “burned up.” Several blocks of central Galveston were in the dark for about two and a half hours.

Power company crews were shoring up repairs to power polls and lines damaged by Hurricane Ike when the mass outage happened. CenterPoint Energy officials reported that a jumper near the power company¹s Moody substation fried.

Power was disrupted in area roughly from 45^th Street to about 69^th Street and from Broadway to Seawall Blvd. CenterPoint spokeswoman Krystal Castro said as many as 4,000 customers were without power during the outage.

The outages forced what few grocery stores that remain on the island after the storm to close for the night. Both the Kroger at 57^th Street and Seawall and the Wal-Mart at 67^th and Seawall forced customers to leave the stores even as power was being restored.

Employees at both stores said they were closing for the night. They are usually open 24 hours.

The power outage also prevented contractors scheduled to conduct overnight tiling work at the Wal-Mart from getting their work down. James Odom and Cody Prior said they drove into Galveston from Brenham on Tuesday night for the overnight work when they were told to go home.

The pair headed back to Brenham.

Kroger employees Sergio Flores and Israel Salinas said that the power first went off about 7 p.m. Employees and customers waited for about 30 minutes and the power initially returned.

Less than 20 minutes later, the store was dark again. That’s when management decided to close the doors for the night.

Power was restored to about 1,500 customers by 9 p.m. with the remaining expected to have lights back at 10 p.m., said Castro.

This story is available through KHOU, Ch. 11's partnership with The Galveston County Daily News.