English calls for probe of outages

The Maui News
Wednesday, October 18, 2006

HONOLULU – State Sen. J. Kalani English is calling on the state Public Utilities Commission to investigate the prolonged power blackouts that followed Sunday morning's 6.7-magnitude earthquake off of the Big Island.

"The people of Hawaii have a right to know why they were left without electrical power for so long – and why our power grid is so vulnerable," said English, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy, Environment and International Affairs.

English represents the 6th Senate District of East Maui, Upcountry, Molokai and Lanai. He was joined in calling for the investigation by Windward Oahu state Sen. Fred Hemmings, a member of the Senate committee.

English said state lawmakers should make it possible for the PUC to investigate what happened to island power grids after the earthquake, which tripped off electrical power generators on Maui, Oahu and the Big Island when the temblor struck at 7:07 a.m. Sunday.

"We need to give the Public Utilities Commission the resources to conduct a thorough and independent investigation," the senator said.

A PUC official said the commission has asked Hawaiian Electric Co. to provide a briefing on Sunday's power outage, including an explanation of what happened. That briefing had not been scheduled as of Tuesday afternoon.

Maui Electric Co. officials explained Monday that "power restoration is a very complicated and delicate process that must be approached carefully and methodically, constantly balancing generation supply and load demand to avoid tripping offline again."

Electricity on Maui was restored to all customers by 4 p.m. Sunday.

On Oahu, HECO officials said the island's power generators tripped off automatically to prevent severe damage to the generators and to avoid a more prolonged blackout. Once shut down, it was a slow process to restart the generators and restore power to the grids, with Oahu residents going without power for 12 to 18 hours on Sunday.

English experienced the hassle of being without power on Oahu when he flew in on a flight from Fiji that attempted to land at the same time the earthquake shook residents on the ground.

"We were landing literally as the earthquake hit," he said.

English said the pilot told passengers the aircraft was only about 70 feet above the runway when communications suddenly went out, and the pilot pulled the aircraft back into the air at full throttle and at a steep climb.

After circling around the airport, the pilot landed the aircraft and passengers were left waiting on the aircraft outside the airport terminal for 3? hours, he said. There were long delays with immigration and customs officials, all exacerbated by a lack of electrical power at the airport, English said.

The senator then was unable to return on a flight to Maui, although interisland airlines were able to process passengers manually. He said the most severe bottleneck was with federal Transportation Security Administration officials who were "not prepared to deal with a massive power outage."

English said he'd like to see the prolonged power outage investigated in a constructive way.

"We're not out looking for blame," he said.

Instead, a probe would point out weak points in the power infrastructure and find ways to improve it.

English said energy security is a key issue.

"We need to be able to get out electrical power up and running far more quickly in the event of a catastrophe," he said.

"To meet that goal, we need to take a hard look at what happened (Sunday) and learn as much as we can – in order to better the next time." 

Copyright © 2005 The Maui News.

Original article URL: http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=24316

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