Bad Cables Caused Blackout

ZIZ Newsroom…July 20, 2010 – Faulty underground cables are being blamed for the power outage across St.Kitts last night and today.

According to Kevin Bennett, power station superintendant there was a problem with the cables and they had to shut down the entire station.

“Basically we had a situation where we had a number of underground cables at the power station which started smoking. We had to shut down the power station as a precautionary measure. We carried out the investigation and were able to discover which cables were actually damaged, and we are in the process of replacing them, at the moment.”

Another power station official says this was not caused by lightning. He says the insulation around the underground cables is old and weak and water penetrated to the wires underneath. This caused the smoke and the station shutdown.

Bennett says if everything goes well, they expect to restore power by mid-afternoon.