Geisha Kow­lessar

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has or­dered a full re­port from En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine in­to yes­ter­day's na­tion­wide black­out, which was re­port­ed­ly caused by low gas pres­sure around 12.37 am. She wants Ram­nar­ine to not on­ly de­tail ex­act­ly what tran­spired be­fore and dur­ing the pow­er out­age, but al­so make rec­om­men­da­tions to en­sure there are no fu­ture oc­cur­rences.

A re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day by the Min­istry of En­er­gy al­so said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had man­dat­ed Ram­nar­ine to fo­cus on en­sur­ing the coun­try's elec­tric­i­ty and oth­er en­er­gy sup­plies are prop­er­ly se­cured.This may be be­cause there were ru­mours that the act may have been sab­o­tage as T&TEC be­gan restor­ing pow­er across Trinidad and To­ba­go around 4.45 am. Ra­dio sta­tions were flood­ed with calls from con­cerned res­i­dents sug­gest­ing the black­out was "strange" and "not by ac­ci­dent."

Mere hours af­ter the black­out, Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ram­nar­ine met with of­fi­cials at Pow­er­Gen, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, to get a first-hand brief­ing on the in­ci­dent.In her ca­pac­i­ty as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the PM al­so put all law en­force­ment agen­cies on "high alert" and or­dered de­ploy­ment of the na­tion­al he­li­copters dur­ing the black­out. She said this was done to en­sure law and or­der was main­tained and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture re­mained se­cure dur­ing the black­out.

"Co-or­di­na­tion of the se­cu­ri­ty ef­fort con­tin­ues via the Na­tion­al Strate­gic Com­mand and the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, com­pris­ing all emer­gency sys­tems and these agen­cies are pre­pared to re­spond to any in­ci­dent if nec­es­sary," she added. The PM said there was one re­port­ed in­ci­dent of at­tempt­ed loot­ing at a su­per­mar­ket in Barataria, but this was pre­vent­ed by po­lice on pa­trol.This was not the first time in re­cent months that cit­i­zens' lives had been dis­rupt­ed by a ma­jor pow­er out­age.

Last De­cem­ber, a black­out along the en­tire north-west of Trinidad forced dozens of busi­ness­es in down­town Port-of-Spain to halt Christ­mas shop­ping.On Au­gust 30, 2011, Port-of-Spain was again with­out elec­tric­i­ty for more than two hours af­ter light­ning struck the T&TEC's Bam­boo sub­sta­tion, Val­sayn. Pow­er out­ages al­so were re­port­ed in north, cen­tral and east Trinidad.In Ju­ly 2010, light­ning struck a Pow­er­Gen sta­tion dur­ing heavy rains, caus­ing black­outs in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try. That in­ci­dent al­so caused sev­en gen­er­a­tors to trip at the Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty, af­fect­ing ar­eas in Point Fortin, Fyz­abad, San­ta Flo­ra and sur­round­ing ar­eas.T&TEC's gen­er­al man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook said pre­lim­i­nary re­ports did not sug­gest the in­ci­dent was de­lib­er­ate.

"Based on the pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion I have, it doesn't sug­gest any­thing like sab­o­tage, but like any­thing else we will have to do a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion," he said.On the cause, he said: "The gas pres­sure in Trinidad dropped low and be­cause of that the in­feeds in­to the pow­er sta­tions were all af­fect­ed and could not gen­er­ate. All the ma­chines failed and that af­fect­ed the en­tire coun­try."Along the East-West Cor­ri­dor, some res­i­dents said yes­ter­day that they were pre­pared for the sit­u­a­tion as their house­holds are al­ways stocked with can­dles and flash­lights, be­cause from time to time T&TEC "played the mon­key."

"When I opened my eyes and saw no time on my ra­dio, I put my hand on my bed­head and turned on my lantern," said a Ma­coya Gar­dens res­i­dent.An­oth­er res­i­dent from La hor­quet­ta said she al­ways had a lot of can­dles in stock.Oth­ers how­ev­er, were un­pre­pared. One res­i­dent said she was in the process on mak­ing pastelles and had to pack every­thing away when the pow­er was dis­rupt­ed.

Emer­gency sys­tem mal­func­tion

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, T&TEC said cus­tomers in Pe­nal and en­vi­rons, served by the Syne Vil­lage sub­sta­tion, were the first to be re­con­nect­ed. It said the out­age stemmed from two caus­es–a prob­lem with the gas sup­ply from Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, which af­fect­ed Trinidad, and a sub­se­quent prob­lem at the Cove pow­er plant, which af­fect­ed To­ba­go."T&TEC was able to restart the gen­er­a­tors at Cove soon af­ter, restor­ing pow­er to the is­land from as ear­ly as 1 am. The fi­nal cus­tomer came back on at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3 am," the re­lease said.

In Trinidad, T&TEC said the restora­tion start­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.45 am, as there was some de­lay in restart­ing the gen­er­a­tors at the Pow­er­Gen plant in Pt Lisas. Around 11 am yes­ter­day, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 per cent of cus­tomers in Trinidad were back on elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply.The process to restart a gen­er­a­tor af­ter a com­plete shut­down –called a black start–takes hours, as ma­chines have to be grad­u­al­ly brought back up to full ca­pac­i­ty, T&TEC added.

The En­er­gy Min­istry fur­ther ex­plained the out­age was as a re­sult of a mal­func­tion of the emer­gency shut­down sys­tem at the Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd plant at Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.The re­lease said: "At 12:25 am, the Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed plant at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate tripped as a re­sult of a mal­func­tion of their emer­gency shut­down sys­tem. This im­pact­ed the de­liv­ery of nat­ur­al gas to the na­tion­al gas grid. This al­so im­pact­ed the de­liv­ery of nat­ur­al gas to the Pow­er­Gen Point Lisas pow­er sta­tion, which con­se­quent­ly re­sult­ed in black­outs across the coun­try."It added that all con­tin­gen­cies were put in place by the Gov­ern­ment to re­store pow­er in the short­est pos­si­ble time as well as to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all cit­i­zens.

Yes­ter­day's black­out gained in­ter­na­tion­al cov­er­age by for­eign me­dia hous­es, in­clud­ing the Wash­ing­ton Post, New York Times, Tam­pa Tri­bune and Mi­a­mi Her­ald.Unit­ed States tele­vi­sion net­works ABC News and CNN al­so re­port­ed the sto­ry, say­ing the black­out was caused by a prob­lem with the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply in Trinidad and a sub­se­quent fail­ure at a plant in To­ba­go.Ya­hoo News al­so re­port­ed the in­ci­dent and quot­ed part of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment af­ter the black­out.There was al­so a post of the black­out on the New Eng­land Ca­ble News.