Power Outages Across Territory Caused By “A Lot Of Different Things,” CEO Andrew Smith Tells WAPA Board

Executive Director Andrew Smith cites severe weather, equipment malfunctions, and maintenance delays as culprits behind recent power disruptions

As V.I. Water & Power Authority Executive Director Andrew Smith listed the contributing factors to the weeks of power outages and rotations in the territory, fans of children’s literature might have begun to recall the title of a series of books popular in the early 2000s – A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Mr. Smith explained to WAPA board members during a meeting on Thursday that “it’s not been one thing, it’s been a sequence of a lot of different things that have been causing these repeated outages.” The first in the sequence, Mr. Smith said, was the wave of “very heavy weather” that rolled through the territory approximately three weeks ago. “As a result of that, we suffered quite a few outages,” he said, noting that the Randolph Harley power plant had suffered a lightning strike during that period of stormy weather.