Jamaica has emerged from a rare island-wide blackout that struck overnight. Energy Minister Daryl Vaz announced Saturday morning that all affected customers had been restored.

Vaz and Prime Minister Andrew Holness both described the situation as “unacceptable”. Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), the sole electricity distributor, is investigating the cause.

The blackout began at around 9 pm local time Friday. JPS initially restored power to 20% of customers (140,000 people) by 2 am Saturday, and by morning 500,000 of 700,000 customers were back online.

Vaz called an emergency meeting with government and JPS officials, demanding a full report within 24 hours. The outage, occurring at the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, raised concerns about grid resilience.

Last October, Hurricane Melissa caused widespread blackouts and 45 deaths on the island.

Source: www.aljazeera.com