ELKINS — Shoppers were temporarily stalled at an Elkins retailer after a power outage caused the store to shut its doors.

Walmart in Elkins, located along the Beverly Five-lane, had to close up shop Sunday after a fuse blew on a nearby power pole.

“The power went out from approximately 5 a.m. until right around 12:30 p.m. There was a fuse on a power pole close to the store that effected the store,” Scott Staats, Elkins Walmart store manager, explained.

He said the store lost a fair amount of merchandise during the outage but was able to re-open in just a few hours.

“We covered everything in plastic, we monitored temperatures and, unfortunately, we lost quite a bit of product. We are actually dealing with that today,” Staats said Monday.

Staats added there are precautions in place to attempt to minimize the loss of goods.

“It was a fuse on a pole, is what they told me. It caused our freezer system to surge and that’s why the freezer system shut itself down,” Staats said. “It goes into a protection mode and shuts itself down so it doesn’t blow up the freezers.”

He added the store had to shut down for power company officials to repair the fuse and restore power.

“We were operational up until 8 a.m. and the power company told us they had to shut off all power so they could fix the problem,” Staats said.