After hurricane, a drenched country starts digging out

Santo Domingo. – Dominican Republic’s State-owned Electric Utility (CDEEE) announced it has begun to gradually restore service to major hospitals, after the nationwide blackout from Hurricane Sandy’s torrential rains and wind Thursday morning, when even the National Palace was left in the dark.

It said however that power hasn’t been restores in provinces with flooded areas, to prevent mishaps with downed power lines.

"The blackout was at 6:56am, the cause of this situation it is still being determined, remember that this is a fragile energy system, which has grids from 40 to 50 years old, which also has long operating substations, and with natural phenomena like this can be put out of service,"

In a statement, the CDEEE said the nationwide outage lasted around 15 minutes, and then service began to be gradually restored.