Off the news: Spate of power outages cause concern

It’s more than a little disconcerting that just four days after a 9-hour power outage crippled Honolulu’s downtown district, electricity went out again Monday night in Chinatown and some downtown areas.

Adding to the concern: Hawaiian Electric said the Monday outage that stretched through Tuesday “resulted from a fire that damaged underground cables in several locations.” Fire? Several locations? This latest outage affected about 3,000 customers — but electricity users beyond that area are left wondering about the stability of the power supply.