Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­enced an is­land-wide pow­er out­age that oc­curred just af­ter 3 pm this af­ter­noon, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant in­con­ve­nience for both busi­ness­es and res­i­dents across the is­land.

The out­age re­sult­ed in dis­rup­tions to traf­fic, as all traf­fic lights through­out To­ba­go went down. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Scar­bor­ough Port ramp was af­fect­ed as it could not op­er­ate with­out elec­tric­i­ty.

To­ba­go’s Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency di­rec­tor, Al­lan Stew­art, said the "is­land-wide shut­down which would have had an im­pact on key op­er­a­tions like ma­chin­ery WASA de­pends on, as well as ma­chin­ery that deals with pow­er gates.“

He said the out­age did not af­fect pa­tients at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Up to 4.30 pm parts of the is­land were still with­out pow­er as elec­tric­i­ty was be­ing grad­u­al­ly re­stored.

In a me­dia re­lease, T&TEC said it has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the root cause of the out­age. It con­firmed the out­age ex­plain­ing that dur­ing the course of main­te­nance work, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3 pm, a fault oc­curred, which caused the units at the Cove Pow­er Sta­tion to trip, trig­ger­ing a cas­cad­ing ef­fect across the is­land. It said restora­tion com­menced im­me­di­ate­ly, and cus­tomers are be­ing brought back on sup­ply. By 4.30 pm, 90 per cent of pow­er had been re­stored on the is­land.