When the lights go down in The Stick

After the bizarre events at Candlestick Park on Monday night, the 49ers and the city of Santa Clara might want to expedite the start of construction of the new state-of-the-art stadium.

Prior to kickoff between the Steelers and 49ers, a transformer that provides power to the stadium blew, causing the entire facility to go completely dark. The start of the game was delayed by about 20 minutes.

Sadly, it wasn’t the prelude to fancy pre-game entertainment.

Video shot from the blimp hovering over Candlestick showed a large flash outside the stadium, followed by all the lights in the stadium going out.

PG&E once again found itself trying to play damage control.

Once power was restored to the stadium, PG&E released a comment via their Twitter feed: “#Candlestick Outage – Power has been restored. Cause under investigation; could be a # of factors. Only 1 customer affected (Candlestick).”

But the fun didn’t stop there.

The lights went out for a second time at the start of the second quarter, delaying the game for another 15 minutes.

It appeared that the fans in attendance took the delays in stride, although at least one fan ran on the field during the second outage. ESPN’s cameras showed Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger watching the scene and shaking his head as the fan was subdued by stadium security.

PG&E released a statement saying that the cause of the outages is under investigation.

It’s a good thing the 49ers won the game, otherwise there would have been many jokes about the lights going out on the 49ers season.

Oddly, there were reports that if the power had gone out for a third time, officials might have suspended the game and resumed it on Tuesday. Some reports even suggested that they would consider finishing the game at the O.co Coliseum in Oakland.