No Damage to NWC Systems from Earthquake

The National Water Commission (NWC) is reporting that there has been no significant damage or impact to its systems resulting from Monday’s (October 30) 5.6- magnitude earthquake.

Acting Communications and Public Affairs Manager at the agency, Charles Buchanan, said the agency has more than 1,000 structures and facilities located across the island, some in very remote locations, which would have been affected by the shaking.

“We also have water supply tanks and reservoirs that are at risk. Thankfully, all our assessments, to date… show that there is no significant or noticeable impact, particularly on the Mona Reservoir. Nor are we seeing any noticeable impact on the 19 miles of pipeline coming from the Yallahs and Negro rivers in St. Thomas,” Mr. Buchanan said.

He informed that the Hermitage Dam also remains intact, with no noticeable damage sustained.

Mr. Buchanan said that the entity is continuing to do assessments.

“We expect there will be some minimal effect from issues relating to pipeline breaks, which is natural after an event such as what happened (Monday). Those are likely to be manifested in the days to come since with underground pipelines, it will take a little while for any breaks to be recognised,” he pointed out.

Mr. Buchanan was speaking at the National Disaster Risk Management Council meeting on Tuesday (October 31) at the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development’s Hagley Park Road offices.

As it relates to other utilities, Media and Public Relations Manager, Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), Audrey Williams, said the system “stood up well and was resilient”.

“We did have the shaking impacting a number of generating units as well as a sub-station. The way the grid is organised is, if there is significant impact on the system, whether from an earthquake or something external… it is engineered to shut down to protect itself. Once crews are able to assess that it is now safe for it to continue operating then we do that,” Mrs. Williams said.

She noted that, initially, several persons were out of electricity, mostly in the Corporate Area.

“The ones that were out of town were restored in a manner of minutes. In Kingston, they were restored on a phased basis, and so in roughly three hours everyone was finally put in. So, they came on in waves so to speak,” she indicated.

In the meantime, Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Digicel, Elon Parkinson, said that immediately following the earthquake there was 99 per cent network utilisation “and this prevailed for a good couple of hours until it fell to about 80 per cent”.

FLOW reported that less than three per cent of their customers experienced disruption on the fixed network.