A powerful storm has knocked out electricity across the entire Canary Island of La Palma, a destination popular with British holidaymakers, and also disrupted telephone lines. Strong winds, heavy rain and frequent lightning battered the island this morning, causing a loss of power affecting the whole territory.
Telephone coverage returning
Telephone lines went down as well, although Sergio Rodriguez, the head of the local government, said coverage is now starting to return. He estimates it could take up to five hours for electricity to be restored following the torrential rain, with around 62 litres of water falling per square metre in one hour.
The cause of the outage has not been confirmed, though the frequent lightning strikes are a possible cause. Electricity supplier Endesa has confirmed that engineers are working to restart the generators and have begun an investigation into the cause.
Complex restoration process
Endesa has also warned that even if generators are restarted, the high voltage N66 main network of Red Electrica Espanola needs to be restored. "It is an isolated system, and restoring it is complex," an Endesa source told RTVE.
Red Electrica said on X: "The restoration of the electricity supply in La Palma continues as the generation units at the Los Guinchos power plant are gradually brought online. At this time, approximately 56% of the supply has been recovered. The entire transmission network is now operational. We will continue to provide updates."
Emergency plan activated
An emergency plan has been activated by the Canary Islands, with 50,500 connections having been put out of service by the outage, according to Endesa. The emergency service plan has been activated with the aim of "monitoring the evolution of the incident" and coordinating a response between service providers and authorities to ensure essential services are provided.
The torrential rain began at around 2am this morning, with around 138 litres having fallen in 12 hours, leading to the outage which began at around 6.38am. Alerts have also been issued for the nearby islands of El Hierro and La Gomera, while Tenerife and Gran Canaria are on pre-alert. There was also a power outage in Tenerife on Sunday morning, although it did not last for more than a few minutes.
La Palma, known as "La Isla Bonita" (the beautiful island), is a lush, volcanic Spanish island in the Canary Islands which is a favourite for nature lovers and hikers.
