Efforts to restore power to St. John continued Monday after an apparent act of vandalism left thousands of residents and businesses without electricity.
On Monday, V.I. Water and Power Authority Chief Executive Karl Knight addressed the back-to-back outages in a livestream on the social media platform Facebook. Knight said the island first lost power before 10 p.m. Saturday night when the transmission line to the island was “disrupted.” The utility announced Sunday that technicians had found “distinctive cuts to the transmission infrastructure that appeared to be deliberate, indicating the damage was not the result of equipment failure.”
Knight said the location of the damage — on the St. Thomas side of the connection, according to a WAPA spokesperson — meant repairs “would be extremely difficult and time consuming.” To restore power quickly, repair crews connected the islands’ older transmission line and brought power back to St. John shortly before noon on Sunday. Three hours later, a fire in the Red Hook junction box that connects the submarine cable to the land-based power line caused another outage, he said.
“Our working assessment is that there was damage that likely occurred during the earlier event Saturday night that was not apparently visible, which led to the failure once the system was re-energized,” Knight said. Crews then worked to repair both transmission lines before focusing entirely on the primary line, “as some of the additional parts required for the backup line were not in our inventory.”
After crews completed “splicing repairs” overnight, Knight said the transmission line passed two phases of testing before failing a third.
“We anticipate that we may need to bypass the third phase, and so we continue to work through the day and into the night, focused on safely restoring power to the isle of St. John,” he said. “At the same time, we’re evaluating additional contingency steps and emergency support options that may help accelerate restoration for St. Johnians, if needed.”
During Monday’s announcement, Knight announced that power could be restored by 4 p.m. but acknowledged that for St. Johnians, “that has been a moving target for the last 24 hours.” WAPA spokesperson Shanell Petersen later told the Source that the estimated restoration time had been pushed to 5 p.m.
The apparent act of vandalism that led to the outages was reported to the V.I. Police Department, and anyone with information about the incident has been urged to call VIPD at 340-774-2211 or 911. Knight said Monday that the person responsible may have been injured while damaging the transmission line, which has a “significantly higher voltage” than what one might encounter in a typical household transmission system.
“We suspect that at the point when the line was being severed, that there must have been some sort of arc,” he said. “That’s what prevented it from being completely severed, and we suspect that someone must have experienced some severe burns or some other signs of injury.”
Knight said the incident will be discussed further during a town hall meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on March 24 at the St. John Legislature Annex.
“I certainly believe that the people of St. John deserve a power system that is reliable and resilient, and that work continues every day,” he said. “While this weekend has been difficult, our crews remain on the job and focused on restoring service and strengthening the system moving forward.”
