Early on a Tuesday morning, an unexpected chain of events left the entire Caribbean island of Dominica without electrical power. The root cause of this widespread outage was a stray tree that made unintended contact with high-voltage power lines located in the immediate vicinity of Dominica Electricity Services Ltd. (DOMLEC)’s Fond Cole Power Station.
Soon after the blackout was reported across the island, the public utility confirmed it had launched a full investigation into the unplanned disruption, confirming that all customer areas had been affected by the incident.
By 12:41 PM the same day, restoration crews made significant progress in bringing service back online. In an official public update, DOMLEC announced that power had been successfully restored to multiple communities spanning the island’s west coast and extending into northern sections of Dominica, including all populated areas between Colihaut and Wesley.
Despite this progress, large swathes of the island remained cut off from electricity when the update was released. These unserved areas included all communities from Wesley northward to the island’s northern tip, the entire east coast, the inland Laudat community, and the southern corridor running from Castle Comfort through Scotts Head all the way to Grand Bay.
DOMLEC initially projected that full restoration would be completed within an hour of that midday update, as frontline crews continued their work to repair infrastructure and reactivate power grids across the affected regions. The utility emphasized that its top priorities were carrying out all restoration work safely, while moving as quickly as possible to map the full scope of the outage and resolve the issue.
In a public statement, DOMLEC issued a formal apology to all customers for the inconvenience and disruption the unplanned blackout had caused. The company also extended its gratitude to residents for their patience and understanding as technical teams worked to resolve the outage, and urged all community members to stay tuned for subsequent official updates as efforts continued to bring power back to every part of the island.