ST. CROIX — An island-wide power outage that struck St. Croix late Sunday morning resulted in widespread disruptions across the island, including water pressure issues for thousands of residents and flight delays at the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport.
The outage began around 11:30 a.m. when the Richmond Power Plant experienced a sudden loss of generation, according to Shanell Spencer, Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority spokesperson.
Spencer said during an interview today on WTJX’s “Analyze This with Neville James” that the initial cause was traced to a fault on leased generation units from Aggreko, prompting immediate troubleshooting by both WAPA and Aggreko personnel.
“It wasn't until deeper investigation we actually identified there were a series of events that occurred, including several stressed equipment, and this equipment required extensive repairing and or replacing,” she said.
Power restoration began around 8:10 p.m., starting with priority customers, according to Spencer. She said all affected customers had their power restored by 9:15 p.m., clarifying that some pockets in the Richmond area remained without electricity today due to isolated equipment failures that were still being addressed.
Since the power outage was triggered by a fault with the plant’s lead Aggreko unit, Spencer said the Aggreko team will now be tasked to come up with a contingency plan to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“They do that after every event,” she said, stressing that the discussion includes why the outage occurred and how future outages can be prevented. “I don’t know if they have finalized that process.”
The prolonged power outage also affected water production, leaving most of Christiansted and mid-island residents with low or no water pressure for much of the day, Spencer said. She noted Frederiksted maintained some water pressure up until the evening.
The Virgin Islands Department of Education subsequently closed all public schools on St. Croix today as a result of the water service interruption.
After WAPA completed repairs to restore water pressure for Christiansted and mid-island customers late this afternoon, Spencer said it would still take two to three hours for the pressure to improve. Due to the low inventory and the aged distribution system in Frederiksted, she said improvements to the pressure were not expected until later this evening.
The Department of Education subsequently announced that all public schools on St. Croix would reopen for in-person instruction on Tuesday. VIDE indicated that it decided to reopen the schools after being advised by WAPA personnel that water availability was expected to be sufficient for schools to safely reopen.
In addition to affecting water pressure, the impact of the power outage extended to the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport.
Monifa Marrero Brathwaite, Virgin Islands Port Authority spokesperson, said the generator at the airport ran out of fuel during the power outage. She said the backup pump that normally kicks in to refuel the generator did not engage, so airport personnel had to manually refuel it. She said the process took about an hour, noting that the airport’s water system was not affected.
Although Brathwaite said the airport’s water supply was not affected, a WTJX employee who was traveling on Sunday noted that the airport went dark after the generator stopped working. The employee said the power outage resulted in loss of water in the restrooms.
Brathwaite said some commuter flights experienced delays. While a Cape Air flight got delayed, she said Fly the Whale canceled its last flight of the evening. She also noted that the power outage delayed passengers in retrieving their luggage from baggage claim.
