From around 6:30 am Wednesday (25) I was awoken with the strange noise of silence. Yes silence does wake you up and it did me immediately

Perfect stillness inside my house. No air conditioning brrr and no swish from the fans. No motor noise from the refrigerator.

And I didn’t like it. I am accustomed to noise. I live in this noise. It becomes friendly. Now it was gone.

We don’t realise how dependent we are on something until we lose it. And we lost it for hours. At my home in George Town power was not restored until 1:30pm. Then it went off again at 3:00pm and returned half an hour later just long enough to lose half of this story I had written.

I have learnt that the power that had been restored in Bodden Town/Savannah (one of the first areas to get power back also lost it around the same time power was restored here).

This story keeps changing but the disruption to businesses today has been ongoing. I shudder to think the amount of money that has been lost.  There were three cruise ships in port today and most of the shops could not open as they had no power.

I have never seen so much traffic on the roads on a Wednesday in July and the story from the drivers is the same: “We are driving around just to keep cool!”

Grand Cayman’s only power supplier, Caribbean Utilities Company (CUC), said the problem began at the Hydesville substation in West Bay and disrupted the whole grid. They apologised and said they would be systematically bringing back the power supply to the island in order to maintain stability. With areas that have been brought back and now going off again there would appear still to be some instability despite a radio announcement saying most areas had been restored but went off in the middle of it as the power blacked out again.

With the very high cost of electricity we have to pay, we expect a high customer service explanation as to why it happened and why it has taken so long and why we had to inquire because we have to date at iNews Cayman received no press release on the subject.