Is this the end…?

Could this really be the end of the Palau Power Crisis of 2011?!?!?
For the last five nights we have not lost power here in Koror for more than ten minutes. Actually, it may not have even been five minutes. Of course, we have not heard anything official, but we have heard that a temporary-backup generator is currently solving the immediate problem of power in the city. Unfortunately for Hailey this generator cannot provide power for everywhere, so Palau Mission Academy and the rest of Airai state, or at least most of it, will continue to lose power at what currently seems to be random times. In fact, they had no power for most of the morning earlier today. They are pretty used to it. But it is exam week so it was extra hard on everyone, the students especially.
Most importantly for us is that we should now have power when it is time to sleep and time call home.

The Palau Power Shortage of 2011 more info

We got more information today about the utilities situation here.

The office received a few different schedules, that kept getting revised throughout the day, but the times below were taken from the last one that was labeled FINAL. So during the times below we will be without electricity or water…until further notice…

POWER will be turned OFF in areas including our schools:

From 9:00 PM to 12:00 AM (midnight) in some areas of Koror (which include SDA Elementary and Koror SDA church)
From 2:00 PM to 6:00PM at PMA (and the surrounding area of Airai State)

WATER will be OFF (pretty much everywhere) from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM

…AND…

from 12:00 AM (midnight) to 5:00 AM

It won’t be too bad. But, we will see how hot it gets when we are trying to fall asleep tonight.

The Palau Power Shortage of 2011

So… the next few weeks to few months may be pretty tough.

It all started last night when one of the main generators at the power plant caught on fire. We had heard about the fire because the girls were going to have a Fall-food night at the house of one of the permanent residents that is from the US. When they got the the house there was no power. So they headed back to our apartments. Once they got back they found that the water was not working here. (Us guys were having our own game night up in the computer lab)

Shortly after waking up this morning our power went out, AND our water was off and then back on and then back off throughout the day. It turns out that the generator will need to be worked on for awhile and there will be some kind of schedule for when we have power and/or water or not. When ours is on other places will have it turned off.

When we know more for certain, we will let you know as well.