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Minimal damage to CUC’s facilities from Vongfong
»Cost of damage unknown but major cost was in labor
Typhoon Vongfong swept through the Marianas early Monday morning but the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s crews were still hard at work fixing power outages and minimal damage until midnight Tuesday, according to executive director Alan Fletcher.
“The CUC crew worked continuously since Sunday night to restore services to customers on Rota, Saipan, and Tinian,” he said.
Fletcher said that Rota and Tinian were fully restored on the day of the storm, while the majority of Saipan was restored the same day as the storm, with full restoration occurring around midnight Tuesday.
On Saipan, Power Division crews used a systematic approach to restoration, where primary feeders were restored first. CUC then went to work on the secondary laterals, which in many cases resulted in a pole-by-pole assessment and hours of work.
“Field crews worked on an extended rotating shift basis, with most repairs being hardware related and tied to the poor condition of the system,” Fletcher said.
He said that CUC is still working on coming up with the estimated damages caused by the storm.
Fletcher told Saipan Tribune that they did not experience widespread damage to facilities, such as the power plant or the power distribution system.
The bulk of repairs that CUC made were hardware related such as cross-arms, pins, insulators and some transformers.
“As a result, our major costs was in labor as we had crews working around the clock until midnight Tuesday,” he said.
Fletcher noted that some CUC customers may still experience limited water supply while the system is being returned to normal.
“If your water appears discolored, we recommend that you flush your water line for at least three minutes before using the water,” Fletcher said.
Many customers, especially in problem areas, became frustrated with the pace of restoration. CUC’s in-house Call Center received over 7,000 telephone calls in 24 hours. This equals the normal monthly average and made it difficult to get through. Even with 24 trunklines and seven operators, many calls went to voice mail, adding to customers’ frustrations.
“Please know our priorities are always with the customer and that service restoration occurred as quickly as possible,” Fletcher said.
The Call Center was launched on Oct. 1 and it was in its first week of full operations.
“It has been many years since CUC has experienced an event of this size. As a result we will be debriefing to see where we can improve communications and logistics for future events. Everyone at CUC thanks our customers for their patience and support during the restoration process,” Fletcher said.
