SAIPAN — A shortage of poles, transformers and conductor has become the main factor slowing power restoration on Saipan, the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation said Friday, with officials estimating that full crews and full materials would still require 45 to 60 working days to reach about 90% restoration.
Speaking at CUC’s weekly Friday briefing, T&D Power’s Jonathan Camacho said Saipan is at roughly 60% of its total distribution lines energized, with restoration still climbing a percentage point or two each day but slowing as materials run short. He said the utility is short on poles, transformers and conductor, with smaller items such as clamps, connectors and cross arms also depleting across the inventory.
Camacho laid out the timeline in conditional terms. If CUC had all of its materials and all of the line crews it needs in hand today, he said, restoration to about 90% would take 45 to 60 working days running 16-hour shifts, seven days a week. He said the island will not reach a true 100% for years, because many homes were too damaged to reconnect and some customers will not reapply until FEMA housing is rebuilt.
To stretch limited supplies, crews are substituting 35-foot wooden poles on secondary lines and reserving 40-foot poles for critical spots where a single pole can energize 20 to 30 homes, rather than isolated areas serving one or two houses. Camacho said the approach is about using materials as efficiently as possible, prioritizing the south side where customers are more concentrated.
Executive Director Kevin Watson said staff have made significant progress since the previous Friday, working alongside CUC and Guam Power Authority crews, and that the progress has extended to Tinian. CUC said GPA, having largely completed its own restoration, has been energizing laterals in the Kagman area and has identified additional materials it may be able to spare.
A $5 million order for poles and transformers is in motion, with partial shipments expected in the first week of June, though officials cautioned that a typhoon tracking toward the Philippines and Japan could delay shipping by about a week. CUC said its concrete poles, which must be rated to withstand winds up to 200 mph, come from a single qualifying vendor in South Korea, and that an initial concrete shipment expected at 40 poles has grown to 100. A separate order of more than 300 wooden poles is en route from Mississippi by land and barge. A governor’s declaration allows CUC to bypass its normal procurement process, with the Public Utilities Commission ratifying purchases after the fact.
Watson said an early appeal to the American Public Power Association, asking utilities nationwide for spare materials, drew little positive response, with other disasters competing for the same supplies and many utilities holding minimum reserves.
On Tinian, Camacho said distribution lines were energized overnight, carried by a single feeder, Feeder 3. The line tripped around 9:30 p.m. before crews re-energized it around noon Friday with no further issues. Tinian is at about half a megawatt against a pre-storm peak of 2.7 megawatts, roughly 20%, and Camacho said he expected it to climb toward 1 to 1.3 megawatts, closer to 50%, by early Saturday as crews continue closing cutouts. The population centers of San Jose village, Marpo Heights and Carolinas Heights are the focus, while the line toward the airport remains isolated by an airbrake switch because of downed poles.
Temporary generators from the Army’s 249th Engineer Battalion at the Tinian power plant are feeding the current load, with generators at the former Voice of America facility, run by NAVFAC staff, on standby until there is enough load to synchronize them. Camacho said the Tinian power plant itself remains under assessment, with an Army Corps team set to perform a structural analysis, and that the plant’s engines are wet and cannot yet be dried for testing because the facility remains open to the rain.
On water, Utility Coordinator Joel Hoepner said nearly the entire island is on 24-hour service except San Roque and Tanapag, which have been receiving water from about 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. With another well recently brought online, he said CUC hoped to restore normal pressure to those villages over the weekend and potentially reach 100% 24-hour water islandwide. Of 108 wells online, 70 are on grid power, about 11 on CUC generators and roughly 27 on FEMA generators. Hoepner said crews are still actively repairing leaks and urged residents to report them to the call center.
Camacho acknowledged frequent questions from residents about why a home remains dark while a neighbor has power, explaining that crews energize the easiest connections first and that an unseen problem such as a cracked transformer bushing or a missing service drop can leave a single house unpowered even when the line is live.
