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April 22, 2005 – The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA) suspects lightning caused Wednesday evening power outages on St. Thomas and St. John and a Thursday early morning power outage on St. Thomas. St. Croix was not affected by the power outages.
Fish Bay and its surrounding areas on St. John were affected by a more than two hour power outage that was traced to a blown line fuse caused by lighting flashes. The St. John outage which affected Feeder 9E lasted from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
On St. Thomas, Feeder 10B was affected when lightning caused a surge on a section of that feeder from the West Indian Company to Bolongo Bay causing a power outage that lasted between 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Lightning is also suspected in the early morning power outage that resulted in a surge on Feeder 10A and a trip on Unit 18. This outage affected several town feeders and the East End and Tutu Substations between 4 to 4:30 a.m.
The Havensite and Frenchman's Bay area also experienced a power outage between 12:16 and 1:29 p.m. this afternoon when a connecting sleeve, failed at the Havensite area resulting in a downed power line.
The Authority apologizes for the inconvenience.