ST. THOMAS — Two separate propane leaks today at the Randolph Harley Power Plant on St. Thomas prompted back-to-back evacuations and left thousands of customers without power, according to an official with the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA).
WAPA crews are working to restore power.
The first leak occurred around 9 a.m., triggering the plant’s emergency shutdown system and prompting an evacuation. A second leak, detected around 11 a.m., led to another evacuation.
“We have since successfully vented the gas from the area, preventing any risk of fire,” WAPA Spokesperson Shanell Petersen said. “Fortunately, there were no injuries, no environmental damage, and no danger to the public.”
As a precaution, Petersen said several generation units operating on propane were taken offline, reducing the plant’s generation capacity. She said several feeders were subsequently impacted to meet load demand.
“We have about four feeders that are offline,” she said, adding that approximately 10,000 to 12,000 customers were affected by the outage.
In a separate incident, Petersen said about 1,200 customers on Feeder 7A lost power after a utility pole caught fire. While the damaged pole has since been repaired, she said power restoration for those customers will not occur until the other feeders are brought back online.
