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DAY'S OUTAGES EXTEND INTO NIGHT FOR SOME

Nov. 6, 2001 – Water and Power Authority officials said late Tuesday afternoon that power was expected to be fully restored by 6 p.m., ending island-wide outages affecting some 25,000 customers on St. Thomas, St. John and Water Island that started around noon when a transformer caught fire.
But some customers were still without electricity as of 7:45 p.m. No one could be reached at WAPA at that hour for updated information.
"The fire is out and no one was hurt," WAPA spokeswoman Laurie Christian said soon after the midday incident. She said WAPA personnel had "rearranged the system" in an effort to restore power, which began returning in some areas about half an hour after the outage.
As of about 3:30 p.m., Christian said, about one-third of the customers on St. Thomas were still without power, including those served by feeders 6, 7A, 8A, 9A and 10A, which cover downtown Charlotte Amalie, Sub Base, Frenchtown, Savan, Hospital Ground, Anna's Retreat, Solberg and northwest sections of the island.
Christian said then that the outages had affected 25,000 customers but that WAPA officials expected to have all power back on by 6 p.m.
St. John was fully restored late in the afternoon, but power went off again at 6:15 p.m. and was still out at 7:45 p.m.
Christian said the fire started when the transformer at the power plant failed. She said that Fire Services was called to the scene but that WAPA's own firefighters extinguished the fire.
Royal Caribbean manager Vivek Daswani was about at the end of his rope on Tuesday afternoon. While power came back on in some locations after a power outage shortly after noon, his Main Street store in Charlotte Amalie remained in the dark.
When the power went out, so did his air conditioner. "People don't want to walk into the store," he said, adding that the heat made the lens of his security camera fog up, rendering it useless.
At The Grill in Frenchtown, manager Donald Johnson said that without air conditioning, the kitchen got very hot. "I just did the grill and salads for lunch," he said.
Daswani complained that his shop has experienced constant ups and downs with the power supply. "I wish they would do something," he said.

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