On Tuesday, there was an explosion at a Water and Power Authority plant on St. Thomas. Flames burst from a high voltage transformer and injured five college student interns. Power to St. Thomas and St. John was out until late that night.(Fortunately life went on on St. John as some places, like the Beach Bar, have generators.)
WAPA says rolling blackouts can be expected until generators can be activated to pick up the slack.
Governor John deJongh’s response was kind of astonishing.
Here’s a clip from his Web site.
I know he means well. But it’s just an odd way to comment. It’s
the kind of homily you might issue to welcome conventioneers to town.
"Hope you have a good time, fellas."
Maybe the Governor could have sounded more serious and said something
like he knows WAPA’s facilities are old, poorly maintained, and
undependable – and he sure wishes something could be done about it?
Nothing like that’s in his release.
I think you are being a bit too critical, this was a public announcement to console families, one would hope that there is a game plan being devised to work on WAPA’s underfunded status, inherited from the previous admin. At least this admin. is using their website, as far as I could tell the Turnbull website was never utilized, at least for the 6 months after his election that I checked it
The VI Government usually merits the criticisms we all share as victims of substandard governance.
However, the recovery of the 5 injured college students is the immediate concern at hand. With that under control, the time to discuss rebuilding and inadequacies will come.
In a story I did I said the Governor “chose to put a positive spin” on the situation. While I felt it to be true, and still do, I did worry that some might think I was being critical of his comments when I wrote that sentence. My personal opinion was/is that he was deeply pained and frustrated, and probably using every neuron he was born with, not to be next to explode in public!