SOUTH BEND -- Officials from Downtown South Bend have released a memorandum estimating the economic impact from the May 16 downtown South Bend power outage at a minimum of $3 million.
Aaron Perri, executive director of Downtown South Bend, said in the memo that downtown businesses spent more than $125,000 on temporary power solutions to mitigate further losses. Several of the solutions relied on donated equipment or labor, which prevented that figure from rising even higher.
"It is anticipated that the negative economic impact of the power outage would have doubled without these efforts," Perri wrote. "Temporary power solutions and effective emergency protocols not only prevented more substantial economic ramifications but many other potentially adverse situations as well."
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