Caribbean Utilities Company says electricity lines suffered “severe salt contamination” after last week’s nor’wester battered Grand Cayman’s western coast, which triggered several recent outages.
Residents, mostly in communities in the western parts of the island, experienced power interruptions on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.
On Tuesday, the outages occurred in short bursts before eventually shutting off completely.
The local power provider, responding to Cayman Compass queries on Thursday morning on the sporadic outages, said salt contamination can cause electricity “to track across the devices resulting in buzzing and crackling sounds along with visible arc flashes”.
“Usually, in instances of severe weather, nature provides a natural resolution in the form of rain, within short order of the salt buildup, assisting our crews with their efforts around elimination of the accumulation,” it said.
Since the nor’wester, there has been limited rainfall.
“It did rain last night but not significantly so,” the CUC statement said.
CUC said it “has been inspecting and systematically washing the devices with fresh water, prioritising on criticality to minimise the impact of potential faults”.
Coastline communities received a severe lashing from the rough seas and accompanying the nor’wester last week Tuesday and Wednesday.
All three islands were impacted by the weather, with businesses and homes badly affected and many in the community still dealing with repairs.
CUC says between the rain and its crews’ ongoing efforts “it is expected that there will be reduced outage events.”
However, the energy provider said there continues to be “areas that require attention”.
It is advising customers to report instances of concern by calling 945-1282, which is the CUC outage line, or, in cases of an emergency such as a fire, by calling 911.
“The CUC outage line operates by accepting recorded messages which are automatically distributed to multiple teams to allow for swift action,” the statement said.
It added that customers are asked to leave a message with details and location of the incident, so it can be addressed by CUC crews.
CUC expressed its gratitude to customers for their understanding “as we seek to minimise the ongoing impact of the recent weather system”.
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