The Tribune

RESIDENTS of four settlements on Andros suffered without electricity for nearly 15 and a half hours from Wednesday night before power was restored yesterday evening.

Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) spokesperson Arnette Wilson-Ingraham confirmed that power for four areas of Andros – Congo Town, Duncombe Corpus, Long Bay Cays and Drake’s Hill – was out from 9pm Wednesday until 11am Thursday.

She said power was briefly restored for half an hour to areas north of the airport in South Andros, but quickly went off at around 11:30am. She said BEC officials were not able to rectify the problem until 6pm, when power was fully restored to the island.

“There was a cable fault that occurred around 9pm (Wednesday) and they have sent teams out to investigate. They managed to get a part of the island back on, north of the airport in South Andros ... at 11 am.

“At 11:30am the generator went down, so that’s why the power was off until 6pm. At 6pm they got the generator back up and running and everyone is on again.”

She said BEC crews have found the fault in the cable and that a team from New Providence is working to fix the problem so that the island is not depending on a stand-by generator for a power source. She added that another investigator will head to the island today to assist with the investigation and help with repairs.

Congo Town resident Wendall Stuart, 66, complained to The Tribune about a lack of communication from BEC officials about the outage.

Mr Stuart, a retiree, who spoke before power was restored said he had to suffer through the summer heat with no electricity and no idea when the problem would be fixed.

“It’s hot and humid,” he said yesterday. “To go through another night like this, I’m afraid all my food will spoil in the fridge. It’s affecting everyone because you can’t be in the house, it’s too hot, and businesses are closed, gas stations are closed up and can’t serve gas.”

Mrs Wilson-Ingraham apologised to Andros residents for the long blackout. “It was an unusually long time for power to be off and we apologise to those residents who were affected. However as soon as the cable fault happened, teams did go out, but when it’s an underground cable fault it’s difficult to pinpoint where the fault was and I think that was the case in this instance.”

The outage is the latest in a series of power generation challenges experienced by BEC.

On July 3, residents in New Providence were plunged into total darkness due to an island wide blackout that lasted for nearly 12 hours.

Earlier this week, Mrs Wilson-Ingraham said the company is currently “doing its best” to maintain electricity supply to the country with “an aging fleet of engines.”