In the hours before Hurricane Paloma hit Grand Cayman, key government emergency response centres lost some of their communications capability.

The reasons for the communications outage were not clear, but they were not believed to be related to power outages that occurred in Grand Cayman later in the day on Friday, 7 November.

Land line phones, Internet access and government e–mail were out for substantial periods of time Friday afternoon into Saturday morning at the Emergency Operations Centre in the airport fire station, and at the aviation communication building, the main operating centre for the Royal Cayman Islands Police.

Government Information Services personnel had to fax out or text message some advisories on the storm Friday afternoon. Most communications at the airport emergency centre were via cell phone on Friday afternoon, according to GIS spokesperson Anne Parsons.

Communications were never totally interrupted, as far as government officials were aware.

The centre of the hurricane bypassed Grand Cayman to the east Friday night and made a direct hit on the Sister Islands instead.

Civil servants were advised on Thursday that the generator at the government administration building was out of service awaiting an upgrade and would not switch on in the event of a power failure.

Government workers were told that if power was lost in the storm, phones for the administration building, police, the monetary authority, immigration and Radio Cayman would go out about 30 minutes to an hour after current went down.

They were also told some data networking difficulties could occur, and that contingency plans were being made to re–route server traffic in case of prolonged power outages.

Power outages started to affect the George Town area around 4pm–5pm Friday and continued throughout the night. Most power had been restored by Saturday.