Wapa

After Brief Relief, St. John Was Plunged Back Into Darkness and Still Without Power Monday Afternoon

ST. JOHN — After WAPA said apparent vandalism triggered the major outage that knocked out service to St. John late Saturday, the authority told the public Monday that restoration efforts were then complicated by a second failure on the backup transmission route, extending the interruption and exposing how difficult the repair effort had become. During a community update Monday afternoon, WAPA Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Karl Knight said St. John lost power at approximately 9:57 p.m. Saturday when the transmission line serving the island was disrupted. After line crews inspected the system and found damage to the transmission infrastructure, WAPA determined that repairing the original line would be extremely difficult and time consuming because of where the damage occurred. To speed up restoration, the authority attempted to bring the older transmission line that had previously served St. John back into service as a temporary solution. Knight said that line was tied...