The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Furious Harbour Island hoteliers yesterday branded the 48-hour Christmas power outage “a disaster”, adding that it “couldn’t be any worse” with the island “packed to the teeth” with tourists.

Benjamin Simmons, the Ocean View Club’s general manager, told Tribune Business that the blackout - which began on Monday, and continued through Christmas Eve and much of Christmas Day - had “been a nightmare for the tourism product” and was “definitely a black mark” for the island’s visitor experience.

“It’s just awful,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to put into words. It’s embarrassing for one. It is the single busiest point of the season, and everyone is just so unprepared for something like this to happen. Our generator was running for 36-48 hours, and caught fire just before Christmas Day.

“It’s a disaster, and definitely a black mark from the experience for Harbour Island... The long and short of it is, it’s been a nightmare for the tourism product. Bad weather, this power situation, the island is full tilt; packed to the teeth. It couldn’t be any worse.

“The saving grace is that for the most part the visitors that come to our shores are repeat guests, and love the island for more than electricity. Our guests have been winding back, keeping the Christmas spirit and taking it in stride but it’s hard to run a business like this.”

Mr Simmons said his property had been forced to ration diesel for the generator as fresh supplies had not come in by boat, while those residents and businesses using propane generators had all “run out” by the time power was fully restored to Harbour Island yesterday evening.

He revealed that he even considered transporting the Ocean View Club’s 40 guests to his other property, the Other Side, on Eleuthera’s mainland for Christmas Day dinner but ultimately decided against it because the sea was too rough due to the bad weather.

Ultimately, the Ocean View Club’s generator was fixed to enable the property’s guests to enjoy dinner as planned, but Mr Simmons said he also “felt so sorry for all my workers” who were unable to cook the 70 turkeys and hams he had purchased for them as many have electric ovens.

“It’s really the people that make the product that have suffered far more than those purchasing it,” he added. BPL last night issued a statement saying all its Harbour Island customers had been restored as of 5.15pm yesterday, but the 48-hour outage effectively represents a catastrophe for one of The Bahamas’ major tourist destinations given that it occurred at the holiday season’s peak.

Ashley Percentie, a member of the Harbour Island District Council, told Tribune Business that it was the worst situation he could recall with the island’s electricity supply since the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

“It’s back on now and we’re still trying to find out the cause of it,” he said. “It has had a detrimental effect on the island. A lot of small businesses were affected. It’s lasted, I would say, about two days. Some areas are back to normalcy. My house, the power came on at about 8pm last night.

“The island is packed with tourists, but people seem to love Harbour Island even if the power is off. A lot of homes that are being rented have back-up generators. The area’s MP, Ricky Mackey, has been working tirelessly to get the island back. He was instrumental in organising the trailer generators to come yesterday morning.”

BPL’s Facebook page was yesterday full of complaints from angry Briland residents and visitors concerning the power situation. Rachel Horvath ‪wrote: “I am a second homeowner on Eleuthera. We arrived for our Christmas holidays at our house and our power went out on December 23.

“On the 24th, BPL came with a backhoe and dug up the cables near our house. They fixed nothing and then took their holiday at noon. ‬Here we are Christmas Day with no power and no hope of having any before Friday. We are fortunate to be staying at a neighbour’s or we have had to return to Canada to celebrate the holiday with power.

“We have had nothing but problems with BPL lately, with wrong billings, huge overcharges and lack of service. We could not be any less satisfied with your service of late. Please tell me you will at least send someone to fix our power on the 27.”

This prompted a reply by Dwayne Lightbourne, who wrote: “Rachel Horvath, welcome to the dark ages…. I mean Bahamas.” BPL announced on Wednesday night that a “major fault on the cable supplying power to Harbour Island has resulted in the island having partial power for the past 48 hours”.

In response, Alexa Poteet wrote: “ Lol ‘partial power’ with no thanks to BPL. If you’re staying at the Dunmore or Rock House with a back-up generator, you’re good. Day four of cold showers in the village for the rest of us.”

Irate Brilanders, some speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Christmas blackout represented “a complete failure” by Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) and the Government to fully resolve Harbour Island’s long-standing electricity generation issues that have been known to all for years.

They revealed that the persistent loss of, and failure to maintain, BPL’s on-island generation capacity had forced Harbour Island to increasingly rely on electricity supply from the Hatchet Bay power plant on Eleuthera’s mainland.

This was brought to the island by two submarine cables, one that landed at the Three Island Dock and the other from Whale Point. This newspaper was told that the main cable, to Three Island Dock, was cut when attempts were made to move the barge that collects Harbour Island’s garbage after it became stuck on the bank.

Several sources suggested this barge is owned by a company controlled by a relative of Mr Mackey, the local MP, but he declined to comment on this aspect when contacted by The Tribune yesterday. The cable cut, combined with insufficient on-island generation, thus created the perfect storm that led to the Christmas power outages.

Fred Mitchell, the Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) chairman, seemed to allude to the barge incident in a statement yesterday. He said: “The residents in that community that rely heavily on tourism are questioning what the member of Parliament for North Eleuthera, Ricky Mackey, knows about this prolonged power failure and why he has not spoken out publicly on this matter and taken aggressive steps to address this in the middle of Harbour Island’s busiest season.”

BPL, for its part, acknowledged both the on-island generation issues and cable problems in its statement, although it did not specify the cause of the latter. “We have confirmed that mechanical defects were responsible for knocking the on-island rental generation offline. Those rental generators have now been replaced,” BPL said.

“Our initial investigation into the incident appears to indicate that the cables connecting Harbour Island to the mainland at the Three Island Dock site failed some time after the generators came offline. The two incidents are not connected, and investigations into the cause of the failure of the cables is due to be completed by Friday of this week.

“Ultimately, it was the the breakdown of the rental generation, combined with failure of the cables, which caused the power supply difficulties on the island over the last few days.”

One Briland source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said seven of Harbour Island’s nine on-island generation units were out of action due to mechanical breakdown and disrepair. They revealed that these units had been failing at a rate of one every two to three months, and said this situation had been known for at least six to eight months.

Questioning what BPL’s senior management knew about the situation, they added that the utility’s on-island personnel were required to send weekly reports to Rock Sound on the generation situation that were then passed on to the Nassau head office.

They also suggested that Nassau may have been misinformed about the nature of Harbour Island’s Christmas crisis, as senior BPL executives seemingly believed that the power was “going on and off” rather than being out continually.

“It was chaos on the island,” the source said. “I counted four to five yachts leaving Harbour Island myself from Valentine’s and Romora Bay. A house with 13 people left. Coral Sands was getting threats that if the power was not on this afternoon their hotel would be empty.

“They keep passing the buck and not fixing this problem on Harbour Island. As a local Brilander it gets you angry the way it is today. When the previous government put the power plant in there, they had a company from the US that was maintaining the generators. When the new government came in they fired the company operating the generation plant.

“During the time they put engineers in, we never went without power for more than one hour. When those persons were operating the plant we had steady power for two years with no issues. The moment they fired this group we went back to what we had faced for 20 years,” they added.

“No one replaced them and all of the engines went down. Every two to three months, one engine at a time went down, and the local technicians have no experience with the apparatus and switching equipment put in. Where are you going to turn? It’s like a game. They’re playing games with people’s lives, and playing politics instead of fixing the issue.

“Who are we to hold accountable? Imagine an island, the third best economy in The Bahamas, being in darkness for 48 hours. No matter how you look at it, it was a complete failure on behalf of BPL and the Government.”

The source added that one of the two trailer generators brought in also needed to be “synchronised” before it could be hooked up, resulting in it spending Christmas afternoon and evening waiting to produce power - a development that was effectively confirmed by BPL’s release.