Guadeloupe: seizing the opportunity of a blackout…
On Friday October 25 in the French colony of Guadeloupe, shortly after 8:30 a.m., striking EDF employees in a month-long dispute with their management invaded the control room of the Pointe Jarry thermal power plant, shutting down its 12 engines*. Given that this power plant supplies almost all the electricity on this archipelago of 380,000 inhabitants, this provoked “a generalized electrical incident” – in other words, a blackout that lasted 39 hours and 28 minutes, until the evening of October 26 and the full restoration of electricity on the island.
Following the impromptu shutdown, the authorities dispatched gendarmes half an hour later to regain control of the control room, and then issued a prefectoral decree requisitioning the employees needed to get the thermal power plant back up and running, which took several days. On the street side, given that the blackout was set to last, the prefect also decreed a curfew (7pm-6am) for the night of the 25th to the 26th throughout Guadeloupe, then in 11 communes for the following two nights (10pm-5am): Abymes, Baie-Mahault, Basse-Terre, Gosier, Lamentin, Le Moule, Morne-à-l’Eau, Pointe-à-Pitre, Petit-Canal, Sainte-Anne and Sainte-Rose… to ensure that no one takes advantage of the blackout to carry out property transfers or targeted destruction. Officially “to limit the movement of people who might take advantage of the lack of light to damage property…”.
Which, of course, is exactly what happened! So, let’s take a non-exhaustive look at what happened in Guadeloupe when alarms, cameras, street lamps, neon lights and cell phone masts were suddenly deprived of juice…
Looting and backhoeing
Continue reading Guadeloupe: seizing the opportunity of a blackout…, island in the southern Caribbean Sea
