A section of the Duhaney Park substation in St Andrew, which was the source of yesterday's Corporate Area shutdown. Residents in Kingston and St Andrew were left without electricity for close to four hours yesterday morning after a fault with one of the company's transformers triggered the outage. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

A zonal strategy saved Jamaica from another islandwide power outage yesterday morning, as customers in sections of the Corporate Area were left without electricity for close to four hours, the energy minister said.

Clive Mullings told The Gleaner yesterday that the outage, which occurred sometime after 8 o'clock, was caused by a short at the Duhaney Park substation in St Andrew.

"What happened is that transformer No. 4 at the Duhaney Park substation was down due to damage to what is called a lightning adapter," said Mullings.

Ruthlyn Johnson, a member of the Jamaica Public Service's (JPS) communications team, said that by 12:15 p.m., power had been restored to all affected communities.

Meanwhile, the energy minister said although only customers in the Corporate Area were affected, the situation could have been worse.

"The good thing about it is that after the last all-island blackout, we had suggested to them that they implement electrical zones so the entire country does not go down," said Mullings.

He said the JPS's fulfilment of that recommendation ensured that yesterday's outage was only confined to some sections of Kingston and St Andrew.

The nation's last all-island power cut, the third in less than two years, occurred on January 9 after a system failure at the Tredegar substation in St Catherine.