The “widespread power cut” which affected the whole of Guadeloupe this Friday, October 25, was caused by “striking employees” from the power station which supplies almost the entire archipelago, denounced the prefect, which does not expect a return to normal before 3 p.m. local time.
“Striking employees of the thermal power plant […] entered the control room at 8:30 a.m. and caused the emergency shutdown of all the engines” at the Jarry power plant, the Guadeloupe prefecture said in a press release. The return to normal on the network electric will not be effective, “in the best case scenario”, before 3 p.m. (9 p.m. in Paris), she warned.
This “complete shutdown of the power plant led to the collapse of the entire electrical system”, underlined the prefect Xavier Lefort during a press briefing, protesting against an act which “seriously” endangers the population. .
After the engines stopped, the prefect called on the national gendarmerie “to secure the control room” of the power plant and decided to “requisition” the employees necessary for its operation. For several weeks, a social conflict has opposed the energy branch of the CGT and the management of EDF Insular Electric Production (PEI) in this territory of the French Antilles of nearly 380,000 inhabitants.
“72 hour battery life”
In Guadeloupe, the announcement of this generalized cut caused some worryparticularly concerning the distribution of water and the operation of the hospital. “The maintenance teams activated the generators on all the sites concerned” as soon as the outage was noticed, indicated the Guadeloupe Hospital Center (CHUG) in a press release. “The critical units of the hospital have an autonomy of 72 hours,” continued the CHUG.
In a supermarket in Gosier, near Pointe-à-Pitre, residents were pushing shopping carts with several packs of water and some brands were already missing from the shelves, but nothing compared to the moments preceding the arrival of a hurricane, a noted an AFP correspondent.
In Jarry, the economic heart of the archipelago, some stores were starting to close, noted another correspondent.
The situation is complicated for Léon Prosper Jimmy, an ambulance driver in Pointe-à-Pitre, “during treatment at the patient’s home or when returning home for those who live in a building where there is an elevator”, explains t -he. They must therefore be transported up the stairs, “in the arms of men, we take turns, we call colleagues for reinforcement, like the firefighters in 3 or 4, we have to lift”, continues the 41-year-old man. “We manage as best we can,” he said.
“Nearly 230,000 households are impacted by this cut,” Olga Givernet, Minister Delegate for Energy, wrote on X, ensuring the mobilization of services and operators in order to restore access to electricity “as quickly as possible”. to the electricity of every Guadeloupean.
The social movement, which has lasted since September 15, concerns the implementation of an agreement signed at the beginning of 2023, after two months of strike by the same agents, who demanded compliance of their contracts and their remuneration with the law. labor, including five years of unpaid salary arrears. As of October 18, the mobilization had since caused power cuts affecting up to 100,000 homes. Last Monday, the management of EDF PEI proposed the signing of an agreement, which the CGT Guadeloupe energy federation refused, a final sticking point relating to the method of calculating paid leave. Guadeloupe is a non-interconnected zone, which means that it must produce its own electricity to meet demand in the territory.