Dec 23, 2005 –Last minute Christmas plans were short circuited for the residents of St. Thomas and St. John as the power went out at 9:27 a.m. Friday.
Around noon some customers were restored with power, as was most of downtown Charlotte Amalie, but many had already felt the outages affects.
Post Offices are generally backed up at this time of year. This morning at the Emancipation Gardens Post Office customers could not pickup or mail packages.
Cassandra Dunn, Water and Power Authority spokesperson, said the problem started at the Tutu substation causing Feeder 13 to go off line and that in turn causing a chain reaction shutting down the whole grid.
She added that when technicians started bringing the system back on line they discovered that Unit 23 had a burnt fuel pump that needed to be replaced.
She said more customers would be brought on line during the afternoon and WAPA expected everyone to be online by about 5 p.m.
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