TOWERS LOSE POWERCRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
The residential towers at Queen Emma Gardens are relying on portable generators like this one outside the King Tower while crews make repairs to the electrical system, which began having problems on Tuesday.
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Residents hope electrical repairs are coming soon
Queen Emma Gardens has suffered intermittent blackouts since Tuesday
As the buzz of downtown life goes on around them, residents of Queen Emma Gardens, a three-tower, 585-unit condominium complex, are enduring intermittent blackouts.
"If they really took care of things, they wouldn't be having this problem. They don't have an engineer to be maintaining the place. It's a big complex."
Reynaldo Reyes / Queen Emma Gardens resident
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As refrigerated food items spoil and lights blink off, many residents are troubled most by the uncertainty about when full power will return.
The ordeal began Tuesday afternoon after a rodent damaged electrical equipment, causing an outage that lasted a little more than an hour and affecting about 60 customers, according to HECO spokesman Darren Pai.
Then power went out again to all residents of the condominium complex until Wednesday, when emergency generators were brought in. This second, ongoing outage was due to a problem with the condo complex's internal electrical equipment and unrelated to HECO, said Pai.
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL /
CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM
This Queen Emma Gardens unit was running on generator power yesterday. Power first went out at the three-tower, 585-unit condominium complex on Tuesday.
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A pamphlet circulated to residents by property management requested their patience as ongoing repairs were made to "severely damaged electrical equipment." Unannounced power outages for residents of Prince are expected over an unspecified number of days.
"I haven't heard anybody that's annoyed," said Allen Robertson, 82, a retired state Department of Education music specialist who has lived in the complex for 44 years. "These things happen."
Robertson and his wife, Kitty, have passed their time without power reading the newspaper and doing crossword puzzles, he said.
Reynaldo Reyes, who has rented a unit in the complex for about 18 months, blames the electrical failures on a lack of adequate maintenance.
"If they really took care of things, they wouldn't be having this problem," he said. "They don't have an engineer to be maintaining the place. It's a big complex."
Queen Emma Gardens resident property manager Lambert Kia declined to speak with the Star-Bulletin for this story.
CORRECTION Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Lambert Kia is the resident manager of Queen Emma Gardens. Originally, this article misspelled his last name as Kai.
Also, a notice to tenants specified that residents of Prince Tower could expect unannounced power outages as electrical equipment repairs were being made. The article implied that the warning applied to residents of all three towers of the complex.
Finally, the elevators and water pumps for the complex did not lose power last week. The article said emergency generators were needed to run that equipment.
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