The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

NORTH Eleuthera MP Theo Neilly yesterday called the recent fire that destroyed Harbour Island’s stand-by generator “a confirmation” that the island’s power plant is exceeding its capacity.

Mr Neilly suggested that very little has been done to ensure the island’s power plant could sustain the “tremendous growth” in the island’s population and energy demands.

According to reports, a fire was reported at the Harbour Island power station on Wednesday evening. Once on the scene, responders discovered flames emanating from an exterior generator.

Mr Neilly said: “We have confirmed that it was just the backup generator and that power is now fully restored throughout the entire island from about 9pm, last night (Wednesday).

“I will stay in contact with (Minister of Works Philip Davis) throughout the day to determine the next step,” he added.

“The reality is, the government has to not replace the backup generator, but look into expanding the plant’s capacity because it is obvious that the mechanisms that exist there now aren’t enough.”

Local government representative on the island, Martin Lee Grant told The Tribune that the island has experienced electricity issues for more than a week. He said, due to those issues, the power station had to depend on the efforts of its stand-by generator to aid its three main generators.

“This has been a vexing issue for sometime now. For the past week we have had issues with outages. It is really tough to be in this position now because this is an easy fix,” said Mr Grant.

“Harbour Island has been plagued with this problem for the last 25 years, you would think due to this island’s size and economic value more would be done to avoid this. Hopefully, someone smiles on us and fixes this issue.”

Harbour Island is often considered one of the best tourist destinations in the world. Earlier this week the island won Travel + Leisure magazine’s top Caribbean island award for the second time.