The islandwide power outage which affected Trinidad on February 16th was triggered by a fallen tree, according to a report into the incident which was laid in the House of Representatives this afternoon.

Further, the report noted a breakdown in communication between agencies, saying: “agencies were ” ball  watching to see if anyone else would take the catch, and in the end, dropped the ball entirely.”

The Report acknowledged that the safe and timely re-establishment of power is a complex and critical task which requires close coordination between T&TEC and the IPPs, and should be based on well documented and tested black start procedures.

Such re-starts must be done under the direction and supervision of T&TEC, it said.

“In this regard, the Report noted that three of the four power plants in Trinidad had black start capabilities on the day, and that within one hour of the outage, all three generation plants operated by TGU, and Power Gen, following their procedures, attempted starting their black start units,” the report detailed.

The findings showed “there were multiple failed attempts occasioned inter alia by the lack of preparedness among the agencies (IPPs and T&TEC) for such an eventuality, the unavailability of black start units, inadequate technical capacity for dealing with such a situation and the absence of a documented power system restoration plan governing the sequencing procedure(s) to be followed after a total loss of power on the island.

Assessment of Response and Recommendations, according to the report:

The Committee identified several weaknesses in the management of the response, including:

• ineffective communication with the public, with heavy reliance on the internet and social media which was negatively impacted by the blackout;

• the absence of the involvement of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management;

• the lack of a systematic approach in the restoration process which led to many unforced errors in the re-energisation process,

• The Committee was also of the opinion that no single person took on the role of Incident Commander and had overall authority, as well as detailed knowledge of the restoration process.

At the same time, the Committee recognised the initiative of the Protective Services to trigger a commendable response in the circumstances.