Power cut across all of Tenerife – 900,000 affected
A power cut caused by what may have been a lightning strike hit a power line in the Caletillas Valley near Guimar. The blackout began at approximately 12.40pm at which point the entire island was without electricity. As one power relay failed, the next became overloaded and shut down to prevent damage causing a system wide domino effect.
Power was restored to some parts of the island as quickly as 2.06pm. By 2.40pm, two hours after the power was cut, half of the islands supply was functioning again but it would take into the early evening, 7 hours, to fully return the power to everyone.
No serious incidents were reported as a result of the power cut, although the related failure of the tram service in the capital, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, meant hundreds of passengers were left stranded. Buses, supplied by Titsa, were quickly in hand to pick them up and take them to their destinations. The Fire Service also had a busy afternoon after being flooded with calls of people trapped in elevators.
Elsewhere, police were sent out to control traffic whilst the traffic light system was down and all the schools, post offices and many offices were closed for the day. To add to the mayhem, the mobile phone networks were overloaded by the masses of people trying to make calls to find out what was going on.
Both North and South airports remained unaffected as they were automatically switched to standby generators so there were no delays to passengers or their flights.
The Director General of Unelco, Paul Casado said yesterday that it could take weeks to find out the exact cause of the blackout but that it would be fully investigated and insisted a lightning strike was the most likely reason. Mr Casado recognised that investments would need to be made in order to strengthen the infrastructure although isolated systems would always be at risk.
