An electrical fault caused by water infiltration during last Friday’s flood is disrupting the Mega-Plex Guzzo cinema in the Central Market, which has had to cancel all its performances until Tuesday morning.
The establishment had been operating since Friday thanks to a generator that supplied electricity to the four largest rooms in the complex. However, a second misfortune struck the cinema on Monday afternoon around 3 p.m.: the generator ran out of fuel. And the oil supplier, overwhelmed by high demand since the power outages of the last few days, can only deliver the fuel on Tuesday morning, the Duty Vincent Guzzo, owner of the cinema chain.
“The Good Lord does not give me a break “these days,” he said with a sigh.
The cinema was plunged into darkness during the deluge that dumped 158 millimetres of rain on Montreal late Friday. Water infiltration through the roof drain blew out the building’s main electrical panel, explains Vincent Guzzo.
The businessman is hopeful that the power supply will be restored on Friday, a week after the disaster. In the meantime, film screenings are scheduled to resume on Tuesday morning in four 1,600-seat theaters (half the theater’s capacity), when the generator is refueled, according to Guzzo.
A moviegoer watching the film Deadpool & Wolverine at the Central Market cinema during last Friday’s storm, says the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. The emergency lights were not working, he said. Cinema employees helped customers out of the room using the lights on their mobile phones.
Questioned late Monday afternoon, Vincent Guzzo could not explain the reasons for this failure of the emergency lighting system, which is normally powered by a generator.