Early this morning, both utility companies failed our community once more as several neighborhoods were left without power. This, accompanied by the rain and heat left consumers suffering for a long time and unable to rest.
The night began with a utility pole catching fire in Jan Flemming, causing a power outage in that area. How a utility pole could spontaneously combust is unknown. Power was restored to the area by 12:54 am.
This peace didn’t last long, because by 4:00 am, the district of Santa Cruz lost power again. ELMAR blamed WEB for this, due to a failure that couldn’t meet the distribution demand, resulting in Santa Cruz and Savaneta being left in the dark. Power was restored by 4:45 am.
Less than an hour later, however, there was another power failure, this time in the neighborhoods of Tamarijn, Sero Pita, and surrounding areas. ELMAR confirmed that the issue was caused by a power cable falling in Sero Pita. They had to wake up their “lineman” team to repair the cables before power could be restored again.
These issues are clearly due to the lack of maintenance of the power grid, causing failures. Utilities Aruba forced the companies to pay dividends instead of investing in preventive and corrective maintenance. Today the community is paying the price. With an election year approaching, these failures could have political consequences. This is surely putting the current government under voter pressure as water and electricity rates remain high while the services leave much to be desired!
