I usually wait 30-45 minutes and then I call.
When I first moved to St Croix four years ago friends had told us about the constent and lengthy power outages. 30 minutes into our first outage I called the Line Department and was told the problem must be in our house as nobody else had called. I told her I could see a good portion of the island from our front gallery and could tell the problem was fairly wide spread. So she took my information and said she'd start a log. 30 minutes later power came back on. 30 seconds after that our phone rang. It was Jasmine from the Line Department asking if our power was back up, WOW! This was not the WAPA friends had told us about.
It was then that I realized (assumed) most people do not call when power goes out. Why I don't know. I suppose "everyone" just assumes it's a line problem, it's normal, and WAPA knows about it. Truth be known they wont' know about it unless someone calls.
When our power goes out I wait 30 minutes - in the event there's a crew close by doing maintenance. After that I call. Unless I see a line truck already roaming the neighborhood.
