Blackout: A Business Owner's McCrisis

Fred Hill was exercising in his San Juan Capistrano home Thursday when the electricity died. As the scope of the outage became more well-known, he started making calls to his three McDonald's Restaurants in the area.

There was no power in Ladera Ranch.

However, the Rancho Santa Margarita and Mission Viejo stores were good to go, and thus began a day played at a frantic pace.

"I've got $10,000 to $15,000 worth of food in our freezer," Hill recalled Thursday night. "I wanted to save the food."

Without knowing when energy would be restored by San Diego Gas & Electric—and word spreading quickly that it could be a long wait—the former NFL tight end did what he could as quickly as he could.

"I thought about dry ice, I thought about a refrigeration truck," he said, "but where do you get one at the last minute?"

And what kind of valuable time would be lost in the process?

So Hill made a beeline for Ladera Ranch.

"I took everything out of refrigeration to the Rancho Santa Margarita store," he said. "I got all the refrigerated food out immediately. We don't take any chances. That's got to be right at 40 degrees."

In all, Hill's van was packed tight for three trips to his other stores to offload into refrigerators and freezers. Refrigerated storage in RSM filled up quickly.

The remaining food was destined for "the Portola restaurant" across the street from Trabuco Hills High. That's where Hill was Thursday night, sweeping the floor while customers kept the place humming right up until closing, the school's first home football game being played and Hill making sure the night went off without any additional hitches.

Coincidentally, the dining room of that restaurant was scheduled to be demolished beginning at 9 p.m. for a remodeling that was 13 months in the works.

As construction workers moved in to seal off the dining room and remove chairs into storage, the last pressing issue of the blackout was the 40 cases of frozen french fries in his van that needed to get back into cold storage.

At that point, though, the day's heavy lifting had been done. He knew he could breathe easy. He also knew he was one of the lucky ones in the restaurant game. His businesses straddled the boundaries of the power grid, allowing his unaffected stores to aid the one that was dark.

"All the stores from here to the border, all the stores in San Diego are without power," Hill said, shaking his head. "What are they going to do?

"At least I saved all my food."