WAPA cuts power to 100-year-old customer

ST. THOMAS — A 100-year-old St. Thomas man was trapped sitting upright in an electric bed after the V.I. Water and Power Authority abruptly cut off his power Tuesday, and his daughter said the centenarian was left to suffer for more than six hours.

“He was miserable,” Paulette Wade said of her father, Alfred J. Williams, who was stuck without any electricity in his hot, 15- by 22-foot room at Lucinda Millin Home after WAPA cut his power without warning or explanation. Wade said electricity to her father’s room went out at around 2:14 p.m., and she contacted WAPA.

“I went over there to see what’s going on, they told me that he has a bill of $259.79, plus $25 reconnection fee,” Wade said. Wade said her father’s WAPA bill is typically around $65 a month but inexplicably grew to $150 in June, which she paid, and he hadn’t received a July bill.

The total didn’t make sense and they had not received a disconnection notice, but “I paid it because I just wanted the light on because he’s on a hospital bed.” Wade said she begged WAPA staff to turn her father’s power on and explained he is 100 years old, and “she said it will get done some time today.”