As tens of thousands remain evacuated from two islands along North Carolina's Outer Banks because of a power outage that struck at the worst possible time for businesses, NASA captured a pair of images that show how dramatic the widespread blackout has been.

Acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite, NASA's Earth Observatory shared the images of Ocracoke and Hatteras islands after they were taken on July 27 and 30. In the first image, light can be seen on both of the thin islands, but after the power goes out, spotting Ocracoke and Hatteras would be impossible without NASA's labels on the picture.

The lights have been out on the two islands since last Thursday morning, when steel casing was inadvertently driven into an underground transmission line as PCL Construction continued work on the new Bonner Bridge at Oregon Inlet, according to CNN.com. With Hatteras and Ocracoke islands in the dark, officials ordered 10,000 visitors to evacuate the islands, and some estimates say as many as 50,000 will be displaced during the outage which may take weeks to fix, NPR reported.

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The fallout from the prolonged outage has hit local businesses the hardest. Hotels have been forced to refund visitors who were ordered off the island, and restaurants have lost their patrons during what is usually one of the busiest times of the year.

"People make money in summer to live through the winter," Janet Dawson, who operates the Cape Hatteras Motel, told CNN.com. "Two weeks would put us out of business, two weeks is beyond the pale ... I think we could limp along, but we would run out of money and would have to close some time in winter."

Making matters worse, weather conditions are expected to be perfect for at least the next few days, with highs around 80 degrees and little chance of rain. But all that beach time is wasted when the beach nor the island are open.

Business owners filed a class-action lawsuit on Monday alleging PCL was negligent in actions that led to the power outage, and estimates more than $5 million will be lost while visitors are evacuated from the island, USA Today reported. Getting reimbursed might not be easy, however – Hyde County spokesman Donnie Shumate told USA Today that the decision to evacuate the island was made, in part, by business owners on Ocracoke Island.

"We have something called a control group on the island, and it's composed of business owners and they get together ... and make the official recommendation of whether or not to evacuate the island," Shumate told USA Today in a previous interview. "It was a decision made by a group of business owners on the island."