Power restored in six towns in Cebu, including Camotes

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines — Electricity was restored in six towns in southwestern Cebu and the Camotes Group of Islands after a power outage lasting for almost two hours due to a grid trip-off.

The outage affected the towns of Barili, Dumanjug, Ronda, Alcantara, Moalboal, and Badian at 1:45 p.m. on Monday, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Central Visayas.

Power was restored shortly before 4 p.m.

The outage in those towns happened at about the same time there was an outage in the entire Camotes Group of Islands, which is composed of the towns of Poro, San Francisco, Tudela, and Pilar,  the Comelec Central Visayas administrative officer, Jason Ivan Delos Santos, said in a press briefing on Monday afternoon.

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Delos Santos said the outage had no effect on the polls since the voting was manual. It would have created a problem if the outage had lasted until the night.

He said that the Department of Energy and the Office of the Civil Defense promptly responded and repaired the broken towers.

It was found out that a “swing arm” of a transmission tower was damaged by strong winds. Delos Santos said these were not deliberately done.

As of 5:40 p.m., all voting centers were closed and 99.6 percent of them had already started counting.

No major incidents were reported throughout the entire Central Visayas region, according to the joint security task force of the police and the military.