Wapa

WAPA Says Weekend Blackouts a One-Off; Promises More Stability, Praises Employees For Finding Solution

ST. CROIX  — When St. Croix went dark at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, residents were understandably angered. It was another experience of being without power from a water and power company where such occurrences had been experienced many times before. What's worse, people have been ordered to stay home by the government in an effort to blunt the spread of the novel coronavirus. Doing so without power is a tall order. But WAPA on Sunday afternoon, during a call-in press event with the media, shared some pertinent details about the outages, including why the blackouts were a one-off, and it also shared details about the efforts of employees — often overshadowed — that led to the eventual restoration of electricity. WAPA Executive Director Lawrence Kupfer spoke to the outages, while Clinton Hedrington, Jr., chief operating officer of Electric Systems, went into deeper detail and also spoke on the employees' efforts. Mr. Kupfer said the outages were not related to the generation units per se....