The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Power and Light officials are in the process of repairing a damaged underwater cable that has reportedly left portions of Resorts World Bimini without power since the weekend.

Arnette Ingraham, BPL spokesperson, said technicians have identified a “fault” in a main cable and are “carrying out repairs” on the damaged underwater line, which she said has resulted in “intermittent outages” at the resort since Saturday.

Mrs Ingraham could not give a timeline for the completion of repairs, however, she said in the event repairs prove to be unsuccessful, the company would seek to source a cable from Abaco and have it sent to Bimini to be installed.

Mrs Ingraham’s statements came after Lloyd Edgecombe, a member of the Bimini District Council, notified The Tribune and claimed that half of the Resorts World Bimini property had been without electricity since Wednesday of last week. As a result, Mr Edgecombe said some 800 employees living in dormitories at the resort, as well as a number of local merchants who rent stores in the area, were being adversely affected because of the lack of power.

Mr Edgecombe suggested that local BPL technicians were unable to fix the problem, and suggested that the company send in technicians from New Providence to expedite the trouble-shooting process.

When contacted yesterday, however, Mrs Ingraham denied that the resort had been without power since Wednesday, but did admit that the company was having issues with providing power to the resort since Saturday due to a fault in an underwater cable.

Mrs Ingraham said that the resort would have still been able to receive power from the island’s overhead lines, but explained that the intermittent outages likely occurred because those lines were not built to provide power to the entire resort.

She also said the intermittent outages were limited to the Bimini Bay property and that no residential properties were affected by the power outages.

“So some parts of the resort would have power at one time and other parts wouldn’t,” she said. “So it’s not like they haven’t had power for the entire weekend or anything like that. But there have been intermittent outages since Saturday.”

She said the delay in fixing the problem was due to the cable’s placement underwater and bad weather.

“It’s literally a cable that’s buried on the seabed,” she said.

“So you can imagine the difficulty trying to find a fault underwater when you’ve seen the weather conditions we’ve also had for the last couple of days. And it’s only a small fault on a very large cable, so they’ve had difficulty and challenges in finding it.”

Nonetheless, she said officials are working to fix the problem. She could not give a possible timeline for completion, however.

“They found a fault and they’re carrying out repairs right now,” she told The Tribune yesterday.

“Of course the cable in Abaco is a second option if repairs don’t work, but at this point they’re carrying out repairs.”