A cat walked into the Guam Power Authority Tumon Substation and “came into contact with equipment” causing Saturday night’s power outage that effected several villages, General Manager John M. Benavente stated in a written statement.

The release includes photographs of the equipment and the cat.

Residents reported outages in Hagåtña, Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Mangilao, Barrigada, Sinajana, Dededo, Santa Rita and Latte Heights.

The contact occurred at 8:55 p.m., which caused a fault in the island wide power system, according to the statement. Some customers had their power restored after 20 minutes; some experienced a 2-hour outage. The last customer was restored at 10:59 p.m.,

“The fault, impacting such a heavy power load center at that time, caused a sequence of events within the power grid,” Benavente stated. GPA’s Macheche and Talofofo combustion turbine units tripped off-line; followed by the Aggreko units dropping to 2 megawatts; followed by the Cabras 2 base load generator tripping off-line, and GPA’s MEC 9 unit to experience a high temperature bellows (technical piece of equipment) rupture, requiring a reduction of generation output from 44 to 22 megawatts.

“With the fault and rapid loss of generation within the system GPA’s generation, teams worked to bring all other stand-by generators on-line to meet the load demand; and stabilize the power system,” he stated. “The focus in such situations is always to avoid a power system black out.”