Power was gradually being restored to Oahu this morning after most of the island was sunk into darkness for 12 hours or more, apparently due to a lightning storm.

As of 8:40 a.m., Hawaiian Electric Co. officials said about 182,000 out of 295,000 customers were back online as the company brought the island back on methodically to avoid overloading the system.

HECO spokesman Darren Pai said this morning that power is being restored from the Leeward side to the east. Electricity has been restored at all major hospitals, as well as at the city's Honouliuli Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The blackout thrust Hawaii's electrical generation problems into the international spotlight as the state's most famous native son, President-elect Barack Obama, and his family were affected in their Kailua vacation compound. It was unknown if the home had its own emergency generator, but HECO officials said they sent a backup generator to the home last night.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann said at about 10:10 p.m. that Honolulu police had talked to Obama. “;He said he is fine and he and his family are going to bed,”; the mayor said on KSSK.

A media pool report this morning said Obama took his daily trip to the Semper Fit fitness center on the Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe.

HECO's Pai said the company has not yet confirmed the cause of the islandwide outage, despite reports that a lightning strike may have caused it.

“;For those customers without power, we're asking for patience,”; Pai said. “;We're asking those with power to practice energy conservation while we get things online. This is going to help maintain stability on the grid.”;

The lights started going out at about 6:30 p.m. during a rare electrical storm that apparently knocked out transmission lines from the Kahe and Waiau power plants. Within an hour, nearly the entire island was dark.

HECO officials said that they believe lightning triggered so-called “;load shedding”;—an automatic shutting down of power area after area on Oahu to prevent a catastrophic shutdown of the entire system. One plant, Kahe 4, was working for a couple of hours giving power to Makakilo and parts of Waianae—however, that plant also went out about 8:30 p.m..

Early in the night, HECO spokesman Peter Rosegg told listeners on KSSK, “;It is going to be a long, dark night, and that's the bad news.”;

During the island-wide blackout, police directed traffic at some intersections, and firefighters responded to several calls of people stuck in elevators. Surface streets near downtown and Waikiki were congested with traffic.

Police and transportation officials asked people to stay off the roads if possible. Motorists should treat blacked-out intersections as four-way stops.

There were no serious injuries or major incidents, said John Cummings, spokesman for the city Department of Emergency Management.

Firefighters responded to three fires immediately after the blackout. No one was hurt and the causes were not known yesterday.

The city opened its Emergency Operations Center at about 6:30 p.m., with police, fire, and emergency responders gathering in front of a large-screen television in the basement of the Frank F. Fasi Municipal Building. Hannemann said they were working to “;get people out of harm's way, making sure our first responders are out there.”;

Hannemann, who had just finished playing racquetball at the Central YMCA and was dressing when the blackout hit, remained tempered about the outage last night.

“;It's a natural, (not) man-made disaster. Unfortunately it tripped up the whole system,”; he said. “;We have to really know what the cause was.”;

The storm that started the island-wide mess is lingering near the state.

Windward and northern residents can expect more rain throughout today, according to the National Weather Service.

“;Right now we're looking at showers at the northeast side from Kaneohe up to Turtle Bay, spreading westward into the Wahiawa and Mililani area,”; said Eric Lau, NWS Honolulu meteorologist.

Lau said those residents can expect continuous shower activity, with some heavy rains and thunderstorms.

The neighbor islands should have intermittent showers, but Lau said, “;Oahu seems to be receiving the brunt of it right now.”;

Pai said some Leeward areas near the power stations in Kahe were seeing intermittent power as crews tried to reboot the system. Honokai Hale got power for only a short time after 10 p.m. HECO planned to restart their Kahe power plant by 11:30 p.m. and the Waiau plant by 12:30 p.m.

HECO has 16 generators. Third-party power generators that sell power to HECO—H-Power, Kalaeloa Partners and AES—also were sent offline as the system shut down.

John Cummings III, spokesman for the city Department of Emergency Management, asked that people stay off the roads and conserve water since the pumping system runs on electric power.

“;Thankfully, it happened at night when most people were already at home,”; he said.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin did not deliver its usual Saturday morning edition, but put out a 16-page, abbreviated blackout special edition for limited distribution to subscribers and street sales.

The Honolulu Advertiser said on its Web site that because of the power outages it “;was unable to print the daily newspaper.”; It provided electronic copies of some pages for those who wished to download and read them.