HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - After days of difficult and dangerous underground repairs, power was restored Thursday to hundreds in the Chinatown area — but HECO officials say more upgrades will be needed.
The outage started Monday night, leaving residents in the dark and forcing businesses to close.
Officials said repairs were set back Wednesday night when a so-called arc flash happened inside a manhole. An arc flash occurs when high-voltage electricity is discharged between two conductors.
Frustration mounts for Chinatown businesses, residents as outage enters third day
It forced HECO to shut off power around 10:30 p.m. to roughly 3,000 customers in Chinatown and Downtown.
Power was restored to all customers about 4 p.m. Thursday.
HECO said four electricians were inside the manhole when the arc flash happened, but were not hurt. The flash was smothered by a heat-resistant blanket that covered cables and equipment.
The cause of the arc flash is being investigated, but HECO says it may have occurred in a splice connecting two high-voltage cables. Crews were working in cramped tunnels underground to fix the problem.
HECO Senior Vice President and Chief of Operations Jim Alberts thanked Downtown Honolulu and Chinatown customers for their patience and apologized for the significant impact on businesses and residents.
“We know customers have run out of patience but the safety of our workers is the priority and we’re not going to send anyone into a situation where they could get hurt,” he said.
He continued:
“Last night was a setback but because our workers carefully planned out their work and took precautions no one got hurt. We’re putting every available resource on the job but making repairs in a dark, cramped space underground with energized equipment is one of the most hazardous jobs in our company and we have to plan out the work so we can do it safely.”
More than 50 Hawaiian Electric crew members and technicians were rotating in shifts since Monday.
HECO blamed the outage on a fire that “damaged underground cables in several locations.” They later announced the damage was “extensive” and repairs would be lengthy and complex.
According to HECO, the fire burned four underground circuits, comprised of a total of 12 underground high-voltage cables, in the area between the intersection of King and Bethel streets and King and Alakea streets.
Traffic lights were also out in Chinatown and portions of downtown Honolulu.
LIST: Traffic signals impacted by downtown power outage
The outage came a week after Honolulu’s busy business district experienced an hours-long outage that triggered chaos. That outage was also blamed on underground cables, but it’s not clear if it’s related.
View HECO’s outage map for Oahu by clicking here.
If you believe your equipment has been damaged as a result of a power outage, click here to file a claim.
This story will be updated.
Copyright 2023 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
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