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Power back on in most of Saipan
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Posted on Sep 01 2005
Power was restored in most Saipan areas yesterday, although tens of households had to remain in the dark due mainly to problems with their individual connections to the power supply.
Pamela A. Mathis, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s special adviser for corporate affairs, said that CUC personnel had completed about 95 to 99 percent of the power restoration in each of the island’s eight power feeders.
Among Saipan villages, Kagman was the hardest hit in terms of utility service. While most areas had their power back starting Wednesday night, Kagman 1 residents only had power supply yesterday morning.
Residents of Kagman 2 and 3 were not as lucky. Both villages, as well as a portion of Dandan, still did not have electricity as of 4pm yesterday.
Mathis said, however, that households that had yet to receive power supply were more like “isolated cases.”
She urged individuals with connection line problems to call the utility. She also reminded them to call only once so as not to congest CUC’s system.
Mathis also reported that at least three poles were knocked down by the intense winds and heavy rain brought by Typhoon Nabi. Primary and secondary lines, as well as several transformers, also fell or were damaged as a result of the typhoon’s onslaught.
Saipan residents cannot expect to receive water during normal hours until tomorrow, Mathis added.
She assured the public, however, that the utility is giving top priority to providing water to the community. Most areas in the island experienced water outage or low pressure because the power outage made it impossible to pump water into the homes.
“As soon as the typhoon subsided, the first thing we did was to turn electricity on for the 140 water wells. But we still need consumers to conserve water. It might take a couple of days more for water to return to normal hours,” Mathis said.
CUC has also assigned a team of power distribution personnel to each school to ensure that classes can resume as soon as possible, she added.
