More than a mil­lion peo­ple were with­out elec­tric­i­ty from just be­fore 1 pm yes­ter­day to up to late last night, as Trinidad was hit by an is­land­wide pow­er out­age.

The sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued for up to 12 hours in sev­er­al dis­tricts with a domi­no ef­fect on the na­tion’s wa­ter sup­ply as 107 of WASA’s boost­er sta­tions were af­fect­ed, and po­lice were forced to im­ple­ment an overnight emer­gency plan to en­sure safe­ty on the roads and to pre­vent op­por­tu­ni­ties for crim­i­nals.

The lights went out at 12.52 pm and with­in min­utes it be­came clear that the prob­lem was vast as thou­sands took to so­cial me­dia stat­ing that they had lost elec­tric­i­ty from var­i­ous parts of the is­land.

“Cus­tomers are ad­vised that we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a ma­jor dis­tur­bance on the sys­tem and are work­ing to re­store sup­ply with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” T&TEC said on its Face­book page around 2 pm.

To­ba­go was un­af­fect­ed.

Busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ment of­fices soon be­gan to close and as peo­ple drove home, the non-func­tion­al traf­fic lights pre­sent­ed an­oth­er chal­lenge. Po­lice of­fi­cers were de­ployed to the streets in many ar­eas to guard again col­li­sions and to keep or­der.

The Po­lice Ser­vice is­sued a state­ment ad­vis­ing mo­torists to pro­ceed with ex­treme cau­tion at sig­nalised in­ter­sec­tions and should fol­low the in­struc­tions from po­lice of­fi­cers on-site.

It fur­ther stat­ed that the Traf­fic Man­age­ment Branch would con­tin­ue to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion when pow­er was re­stored across the coun­try.

But as the hours passed, the sit­u­a­tion on­ly wors­ened.

Workers at a store on High Street, San Fernando, listen to a transistor radio as they try to get information on the Island wide black out, yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems

De­spite Bmo­bile and Dig­i­cel keep­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion run­ning through their cell tow­ers, many still ex­pe­ri­enced prob­lems with their ser­vice and even­tu­al­ly, as cell­phone bat­ter­ies died, com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween fam­i­ly and loved ones be­came im­pos­si­ble.

Com­pa­nies with gen­er­a­tors kept run­ning, in­clud­ing me­dia hous­es that sought to keep the coun­try abreast of the sit­u­a­tion.

At 3.20 pm, T&TEC is­sued an­oth­er up­date.

“The In­de­pen­dent Pow­er Pro­duc­ers (IPPs) are cur­rent­ly restart­ing the gen­er­a­tors to al­low a grad­ual restora­tion of sup­ply. This process will take ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2-3 hours,” it said.

That too, proved am­bi­tious as most of the coun­try re­mained dark and at 6.22 pm, the Com­mis­sion re­port­ed that some ar­eas were in fact start­ing to get back sup­ply.

“We can re­port that lim­it­ed restora­tion start­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5.00 p.m. Some cus­tomers in Pe­nal, Gand­hi Vil­lage and en­vi­rons in Cen­tral Trinidad were brought back on sup­ply. The process of restart­ing the gen­er­a­tors re­quires time and is very grad­ual. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in this in­stance, the process is tak­ing longer than an­tic­i­pat­ed and it will be a few more hours be­fore all cus­tomers are back on sup­ply. We ac­knowl­edge the dis­tress this is caus­ing and we are work­ing close­ly with the In­de­pen­dent Pow­er Pro­duc­ers to com­plete the process.”

With some fu­el sta­tions still op­er­at­ing, hun­dreds be­gan rush­ing for gas, form­ing long lines in Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do and Wright­son Road.

Gas, how­ev­er, was not the on­ly prob­lem.

A worker at Dem Boys Apparelon High Street, San Fernando, sits on a speaker box as the store remained in darkness because of the Island wide black out, yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

107 wa­ter boost­er sta­tions af­fect­ed

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) then is­sued a state­ment say­ing that most of its wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties and boost­er sta­tions through­out Trinidad had been im­pact­ed by the pow­er out­age.

“These in­clude: 40 Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants, 107 Boost­er Sta­tions, 210 ground­wa­ter sources, as well as de­sali­na­tion and waste­water fa­cil­i­ties lo­cat­ed across North and South Trinidad are out of op­er­a­tion. Some fa­cil­i­ties are op­er­at­ing on lim­it­ed pow­er ca­pac­i­ty through gen­er­a­tor sup­ply,” WASA said.

Those in­clud­ed Hol­lis, Tom­pire, Tal­paro and Trin­i­ty (Full Pro­duc­tion), Acono, Siparia and Cara­pal (Par­tial Pro­duc­tion).

In ad­di­tion, WASA said, “It may take 24 to 72 hours for the sup­ply to nor­mal­ize to some af­fect­ed ar­eas”.

As the day dark­ened, con­cerns about safe­ty dur­ing night­time hours took cen­tre fo­cus.

Po­lice emer­gency plan

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, how­ev­er, sought to re­as­sure the coun­try that po­lice were mov­ing to ease their fears.

Ja­cob said that the op­er­a­tional units of the Po­lice Ser­vice were im­me­di­ate­ly despatched in foot and mo­bile pa­trols as soon as the pow­er went down around 1 pm.

“We im­me­di­ate­ly went in­to high alert. All mo­bile units were in­formed to con­duct pa­trols, while all oth­er op­er­a­tional units were or­dered to be out­side,” he added.

Ja­cob re­it­er­at­ed that they took a proac­tive stance in re­spond­ing to the sit­u­a­tion.

Late yes­ter­day af­ter­noon there were sev­er­al mes­sages on so­cial me­dia al­leg­ing a se­ries of rob­beries tak­ing place in West Trinidad in­clud­ing Diego Mar­tin, Mar­aval and Care­nage, how­ev­er, se­nior of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion dis­pelled the ru­mours.

Police officers direct traffic on the Priority Bus Route and the Croisee inersection in San Juan during the nationwide black out, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

WASA GM’s daunt­ing time­line

T&TEC’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook was a live guest on the CNC3 news­cast at 7.06 pm and said it would take an­oth­er five hours for the sup­ply to be re­stored.

He said a fault was de­tect­ed at the Union Gand­hi 220 KV cir­cuit and that while they were able to iden­ti­fy the fault­ed lo­ca­tion, they were still in­ves­ti­gat­ing the rea­son for the fault.

He said dur­ing the pe­ri­od of de­fault and be­cause it was a ma­jor line, the ma­chines at Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) went in­to shut­down mode.

“At this stage, while the sys­tem was ful­ly cleared at 1.50 pm, the is­sue was to get all the gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty back on­to the grid and that is caus­ing some chal­lenges. We have nev­er had this sit­u­a­tion oc­cur­ring for many years and all four gen­er­at­ing sta­tions are sep­a­rat­ed and we are hav­ing chal­lenges get­ting the ca­pac­i­ty back on­to the grid and in­ter­con­nec­tion there­after,” he said.

“If I had to give you a clear idea of when pow­er would be re­stored, I would say any­thing in the re­gion of four or five hours,” he added.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­lves was al­so live and apol­o­gised to the na­tion “for this ma­jor dis­rup­tion and in­con­ve­nience”.

He said he was at the T&TEC main con­trol cen­tre in Mt Hope and “the guys go­ing out of their way and col­lab­o­rat­ing with in­de­pen­dent pow­er pro­duc­ers to bring elec­tric­i­ty back”.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that what tran­spired had ex­posed the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties on the elec­tri­cal grid.

He added he would be speak­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net to look at the grid and put con­tin­gen­cies in place to en­sure that this sit­u­a­tion is re­solved in the short to medi­um term.

He al­so promised an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to un­der­stand what hap­pened and re­port on ways for it not to be re­peat­ed.

Motorists wait in line to buy gas at an NP Gas Station in Cross Crossing, San Fernando, last night.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Sup­ply restora­tion be­gins

Around 9.30 pm, T&TEC was again up­dat­ing the coun­try.

“We con­tin­ue to sup­port the ef­forts of our In­de­pen­dent Pow­er Pro­duc­ers to get pow­er back on­to to grid for dis­tri­b­u­tion by T&TEC. While restora­tion is mov­ing slow­er than ini­tial­ly hoped, more cus­tomers (com­mu­ni­ties in clos­est prox­im­i­ty to the gen­er­at­ing plants) are back up. Most cus­tomers from Pe­nal to Pt Lisas are now on sup­ply. We con­tin­ue to grad­u­al­ly push pow­er fur­ther north, west and east. We an­tic­i­pate that, bar­ring any un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, those cus­tomers should be back on in ap­prox­i­mate­ly two hours.”

T&TEC is­sued an­oth­er state­ment at 11 pm say­ing the fault on the Gand­hi Vil­lage/Union Es­tate 220 KV line re­sult­ed in sys­tem in­sta­bil­i­ty and caused all the gen­er­at­ing ma­chines op­er­at­ed by IPPs to trip, lead­ing to a loss of sup­ply to all cus­tomers in Trinidad.

“Restart­ing the gen­er­a­tors from ze­ro is known as a black start, how­ev­er, there were some un­fore­seen de­lays in com­plet­ing this process,” it said.

It added: “At this time all the IPPs have start­ed their gen­er­a­tors and most cus­tomers from Pe­nal to Mt Hope are back on sup­ply. Bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, we ex­pect to re­store sup­ply to the rest of the is­land (east, fur­ther north and west) by 1:00 a.m. We again apol­o­gise for the ex­tend­ed out­age and the ag­gra­vat­ed in­con­ve­nience caused. T&TEC is mind­ful of its man­date to pro­vide cus­tomers with a safe and re­li­able sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty and reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to do so. The Com­mis­sion will share fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on this in­ci­dent to­mor­row, when in­ter­nal as­sess­ments are more ad­vanced.”
By 1 am, more than 12 hours af­ter it went, many were re­port­ing that elec­tric­i­ty had fi­nal­ly been re­stored in their dis­tricts.

Joanne Brown lights a candle at her home in Marabella during the black out, last night.

RISHI RAGOONATH

- Com­piled by Samp­son Nan­ton with ad­di­tion­al re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton and Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant.