Van­dals plunged hun­dreds of res­i­dents in Princes Town and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties in­to dark­ness on Fri­day night af­ter dam­ag­ing crit­i­cal Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) in­fra­struc­ture in the Fair­field Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment.

The at­tack left over 450 cus­tomers with­out elec­tric­i­ty for sev­er­al hours, with some re­main­ing with­out pow­er yes­ter­day, as emer­gency per­son­nel from T&TEC Dis­tri­b­u­tion South Area car­ried out re­pairs to sev­ered un­der­ground ca­bles con­nect­ed to a cir­cuit break­er car­ry­ing 12,000 volts of elec­tric­i­ty. Al­though the ca­bles had been cut, they were not stolen. In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the van­dals may have fled the scene be­fore com­plet­ing the theft, as a slip­per and oth­er items were re­port­ed­ly found near the in­fra­struc­ture.

In a state­ment, T&TEC said emer­gency per­son­nel had re­stored elec­tric­i­ty overnight, but about an hour lat­er, res­i­dents re­port­ed an­oth­er out­age. The com­pa­ny said the in­ter­rup­tion was traced to sev­ered un­der­ground ca­bles, prompt­ing crews to re­turn to the site to car­ry out fur­ther re­pairs. The com­pa­ny said pow­er was re­stored in phas­es through­out yes­ter­day, start­ing from 10 am and was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by mid­day.