Metal halide beach lights warming up

The main beach at Seaside, Oregon is well-lit all night by multiple HPS floodlights on the adjacent hotels. This particular hotel was the only one with metal halide lights - I think these were 400w, but they may be only 250w. They forgot to turn them on until about 11pm Friday night, and I took this photo during warm-up. On Saturday night, they weren't turned on at all. Strange that they weren't on timers or photocontrols.