From CUC 5:09PM

iNews Cayman has finally received a CUC statement:

UPDATE:

Power has been restored to all customers on Grand Cayman. Electricity was lost at 4:34 this morning and fully power was restored at 3:32 pm. However, a small section between the Hyatt building and the Ritz Carlton remained without power until 4:55 pm. This was necessary to facilitate repairs to a damaged switch.

CUC personnel have worked to restore power in a safe manner.

The initial outage was caused by equipment failure on a section of the transmission line between the Power Plant at North Sound Road and the South Sound Substation. This caused loss of power to customers from South Sound to the Eastern Districts.

The teams were working to bring the power back up when the faulty transmission line affected the entire system and caused power to be lost across the island. The power was subsequently restored in a phased manner to ensure system stability.

CUC sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience caused to customers affected by this outage.

Earlier story:

Many districts in Grand Cayman experienced power outages as early as 4:30am and by 6:00am the whole island was one big blackout and as late as 3pm some areas were still without power.

Downtown George Town was reconnected around 11;30am but other areas including the busy tourist Seven Mile Beach strip was still out at 2;30pm.

The reason according to CUC – “it is still under investigation”. The only release this publication got concerning the problem was through a LIME  cell phone message that said “CUC crews were working as quickly as possible to restore the power to all customers in a safe manner.” and all districts would be back to normal within TWO Hours!! We received that at 11:30am.

CNS have reported a CUC  spokesperson “confirmed that there had been no explosion at the firm’s power plant in the industrial area”.