Nearly all of Curaçao hit by power blackout for over 12 hours

A power outage across the entire island of Curaçao was finally resolved at about 1:30 a.m. local time on Friday, or 7:30 a.m. in the Netherlands. The blackout lasted more than half a day, and was broken up by intermittent moments where the electricity in some neighborhoods briefly turned back on before shutting down again minutes later.

“We can confirm that the cause of the blackout is a malfunction in one of the main cables that connects the substation at Parera,” utility company Aqualectric said. “This particular cable has a crucial role in power distribution at the substation in Parera. The substation in Parera went offline due to its malfunction, resulting in a complete imbalance in our local power distribution.”

The restoration of power was still considered to be “delicate,” the company said. More work still needed to be carried out on Friday to stabilize the electricity grid.

“This is a shame how they keep on posting several updates without mentioning to us that the electricity will fall out every 30 minutes,” said local resident Kimberley Fernandes on the company’s Facebook page. “People cannot finish online work, the children that need to study for them exams cannot be focused or fully done with their studying.“

“I've got the power... After 10 minutes: I had the power...” wrote Poul Percy Torp, who owns and operates the boutique hotel, Villa Amalie, in Willemstad.

The outage was unrelated to other periodic blackouts in the island over the past week. These were largely attributed to increased demand due to the hot weather. Temperatures peaked at 35 degrees Celsius during the day, and fell no lower than 27 degrees overnight.

Roughly 166,000 people live on Curaçao. Last year, the Dutch Caribbean island welcomed another 34,000 tourists during the month of June.