Electricity is restored
17-1/2 hours after a
fire knocked it out

By Linda Aragon and Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin

By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Hawaiian Electric crews work on lines under Merchant
Street early this morning with the darkened Bank of Hawaii
building in the background.

Power was restored to all but two buildings in downtown Honolulu at 6:32 a.m. today, ending a 17-1/2-hour outage that disrupted traffic and kept residents and businesses in the dark.

"Ninety percent of the buildings have come back," Heco's Fred Kobashikawa said today.

The two buildings without power are the Stangenwald Building on Merchant Street and another unidentified building, Kobashikawa said. He did not know when full power would be restored.

About 25 downtown office buildings, as well as street lights, traffic lights and telephone service were affected by the outage that began at 1 p.m. yesterday when the smoke and smell of a smoldering underground power line prompted Hawaiian Electric Co. to cut power to the buildings while Heco crews and Honolulu Fire Department firefighters put out the blaze.

"It was a low-voltage short circuit that caused the smoke. There is still no indication what is the root cause," Kobashikawa said last night. He explained the delay in getting power back on: "We're still trying to isolate the bad circuits. It's just going longer than we anticipated."

The 1 p.m. fire snarled traffic at Bishop Street between King Street and Nimitz Highway for nearly two hours yesterday.

Cal Tadaki, GTE Hawaiian Telephone spokesman, said the power outage affected phone service in the area because much of the telephone equipment used by private companies is run by electricity. "The phone service is there," Tadaki said, "but the equipment and switching service is run by electricity.

"In some cases, the phones will ring, but the businesses won't know which line to answer since the none of the lines will light up."

Businesses in the area were affected unless they have their own private power source such as generators.

Chester Bow, a GTE Hawaiian Tel telephone technician, said workers would check for phone problems today. He said most businesses have battery backups. "But the battery only lasts about 6-8 hours."

Internet service also was interrupted for customers of LavaNet, whose main operations are in the Grosvenor Center.

Kathy Wataoka, assistant manager at Harbor Square, said this is the second time in a year a fire to an underground Heco line has affected power at the 360-unit, two-tower structure. The first was last Oct. 4, when a manhole explosion on Richards Street left downtown without power for several hours.

Although power to their units wasn't restored until this morning, residents of the 27-story condominium were returning home before that, she said. The electric company has been helpful, Wataoka said, but the outages are distressing.

"It's a concern of course. ... It's affecting Harbor Square," she said.

Although the fire didn't cause any manhole covers to blow from their settings as in recent incidents, yesterday's trouble was the latest in a series of underground-line short-circuits that have plagued the electric company over the past year. Heco in February announced it was replacing some 2,000 solid manhole covers with vented covers to let air pressure escape, lessening the chance of covers being dislodged by explosion.

"Generally, the underground fires happen in cables across the country," explained Heco spokesman Chuck Freedman, who said short-circuits in the power line may spark gas trapped underground, igniting a fire and possibly an explosion.

"This happens to be part of the business. We try to reduce it, and we try to reduce its impact -- as we have in the downtown area," Freedman said. No one was injured in the incident, he said.

Yesterday's fire involved a 120-volt low voltage cable that began smoldering near Bishop and Merchant streets, behind the Bank of Hawaii building. Smoke rose from two manhole covers along Bishop Street, prompting police to shut that portion of the road until electrical crews and firefighters arrived.

To repair the cable, Freedman said, crews turned off power to a grid connected to some "very large" customers. Although Heco has backup lines to power these buildings, the location of the damaged cable forced crews to shut power to the grid before they could work on bringing each customer back on line, he said.

Buildings affected included Amfac, Grosvenor Center, Harbor Towers, Financial Plaza of the Pacific, the Hawaii Government Employees' Association, Harbor Square and the Federal Building.

Yoshiko Hishida, a translator for the law firm of Ronald T. Oldenburg, had to walk down 27 floors at Grosvenor Center to get to the Federal Court building -- which was locked due to power loss when she arrived.

"Thank god I wasn't in the elevator," she said. "I hope I don't have to climb up 27 floors."

At Federal Court, according to Deputy Public Defender Pam Byrne, visiting Federal Judge Manuel L. Real was listening to opening statements by Assistant U.S. Attorney Omer Poirier when the lights went out.

"Is it something I said?" Poirier asked in the darkness. Real decided to proceed with the statements despite the dark courtroom.

Heco's Freedmandoesn't believe yesterday's cable fire is connected with the Oct. 4 fire on Richards Street. That fire injured two people. Freedman advised people affected by the outage to contact the company's risk management office to see if they're eligible to file a claim.

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Star-Bulletin reporters Gregg K. Kakesako, Linda Hosek
and Susan Kreifels contributed to this report.