WAPA says it's 'cautiously optimistic' that blackouts will end Friday

St. Thomas and St. John residents suffered through yet another day of rolling blackouts because of generator failures Wednesday, and the V.I. Water and Power Authority’s online outage map also failed, leaving customers without any way to see which feeders were offline.

The blackouts started around 9:30 a.m. and continued into the night, with some areas experiencing at least three separate blackouts that stretched on for hours. WAPA released outage schedules after the blackouts began, but some feeders went on and off without warning. Several alerts also were issued for outages on St. Croix Wednesday evening, which were attributed to lightning strikes.

The St. Thomas-St. John outage schedule published by WAPA at 2:50 p.m. extended to 7:30 p.m., but power did not return to offline feeders at that time, leaving customers confused and frustrated. In the absence of the online outage map or clear communication from WAPA, customers took to social media to share information about which neighborhoods were without electricity.