KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Jamaica Public Service (JPS) is reporting that there are approximately 20,000 customers currently without electricity in Kingston and St Andrew and St Catherine.

With majority of the outages in the Corporate Area, the light and power company reiterated that this is as a result of the extremely windy conditions associated with the cold front currently affecting the island.

Corporate Communications Manager at JPS, Audrey Williams, said that restoration work continues and the public will be updated as soon as more information is available.

She said the company does not have an estimated time for full restoration, but teams are currently working to have the problem resolved. “They’re continuing to work as quickly as they can and as safely as they can, due to the current weather conditions.”

JPS  in a news release late Monday said that its teams would work up to midnight to restore supply to customers affected by outages and have service resumed by 7:00 am today.  

It further indicated that, while it was making every effort to restore supply to as many customers as possible last night, the persisting windy conditions were making restoration difficult and risky for the JPS crews.

“The abnormal weather conditions have wreaked havoc on the power system, causing trees and heavy branches to fall on lines, resulting in blown transformers, blown fuses and other faults on the system,” the release said.