Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — This Tuesday, Feb. 12th, photo provided by the American Samoa Power Authority (ASPA) shows crew members clearing tree branches that fell on top of primary lines in Alofau village, after the Methodist Church — heading east.

As reported by Samoa News yesterday, a power outage prompted the cancellation of classes for six public schools on the east side of Tutuila.

Responding to Samoa News questions emailed earlier in the day, ASPA acting executive director Wallon Young said Tuesday night that the cause of the power outage was a tree, which fell on the “3-phase primary lines” in Alofau village at 4:15am on Tuesday.

“This caused the Vacuum Fault Interrupter (VFI) located at Laulii, to automatically trip to isolate the fault,” he explained. “Approximately 467 customers or households were affected by this outage.”

According to Young, the “VFI was re-energized” at 6:48am Tuesday to restore power from Laulii to the eastern end of Tutuila 

Power to parts of Alofau that were kept isolated — so the trees could be trimmed — was restored a little later at 7:05am.

“ASPA crews will continue vegetation clearing in the area for the rest of the week,” said Young.

Around 4:45p.m on Tuesday, ASPA released a statement apologizing to its customers who were affected by the power outage from Lauli’i to Onenoa, saying the ASPA Trouble Call Office received calls around 4:30am that power was out and “the crews were quickly dispatched to locate the cause of the problem.”

“ASPA apologizes for any inconvenience this has caused our customers, especially the Department of Education,” the statement said.