TheBuzz
TheBuzz
POWER WILL BE SHUT OFF to what is perhaps downtown Honolulu's most wired building from midnight to 10 a.m. Sunday. 1132 Bishop to go
dark in the night1132 Bishop St., home to such high-profile high-tech companies as WorldPoint Inc., is to undergo maintenance and testing which will require electricity to be turned off.
Hawaiian Electric Co. spokesman Fred Kobashikawa said the flow of electricity to the one building from two different substations would be interrupted.
"They've asked us to be on standby and do the switching as they require," he said.
Miles Kamimura, president of building manager Colliers Monroe Friedlander Management Inc. said "What we're doing is infrared scanning thermography."
He said the testing will reveal heat emanating from the building's electrical apparatus which may have come loose over time. Any hot spots will be tightened up, he said, to prevent any short circuits or other problems.
Kamimura said the company does this type of maintenance every three years, which is more often than the five-year interval practiced by others.
Kamimura said he'd received no tenant complaints or calls expressing alarm.
"They all have (power and systems) redundancy," he said, "All the tenants who have a need for 24-hour service will either be on our backup generator or have their own UPS (uninterrupted power supply) system."
WorldPoint Inc. did not return calls, but other building tenants were unconcerned.
Assistant U.S. Trustee Gayle Lau, of the U.S. Trustee's Office, said "For our office, there's no real concern."
He said his staff would preserve documents through "standard power down procedures."
Better Business Bureau of Hawaii President Anne Deschene said notification of the planned electrical shutdown was dated March 23
"We had what I would consider ample time," and expected no problem, since the BBB has backup batteries in place for its 24-hour online operations.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4757, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com