The Tribune

IRATE South Bimini homeowners yesterday slammed Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) as “a joke” after suffering widespread energy outages for four days, adding: “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Residents, speaking on condition of anonymity, said power supply to the island had either been cut-off completely or severely disrupted for the past four days since early afternoon Thursday with no explanation forthcoming from BPL as to the cause.

While electricity supplies were restored by 6pm-7pm on Saturday night, following an all-day outage while repairs were attempted, Tribune Business was informed late afternoon yesterday that problems persist because voltage levels are insufficient to power larger items such as air conditioning units, pool pumps and waste plants.

Homeowners said that while appliances requiring 110 volts are working, those needing 240 volts and above were not. One told this newspaper: “This is day four with no power to the A/C, pool pumps or waste plant. Oh joy. Because the pool pumps are not operating, the water is turning green, and with the waste plant not operating the lower units will have sewerage back-up.

“Half the people have no power. It’s been four days now. It’s a joke. We have a homeowner who has put a back-up generator on his balcony. It’s as loud as anything but he says he is not putting up with this. Desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s 92 degrees here today and we’re dying. Five people said “screw this” and went north to the Hilton (Resorts World), which has its own power plant.

“They’ve left. There are very few of us left that will try to persevere; 80 percent gave up. Would you sit in a room with no A/C, no Internet and no TV? Of course not. Right now our salvation is for this cold front to come through. It’s supposed to come through tonight hopefully. We’ll see.”

Dr Donovan Moxey, BPL’s chairman, said he was unaware of the situation in South Bimini when contacted by this newspaper yesterday and would have to obtain the necessary information. Quincy Parker, the state-owned utility’s spokesperson, could not be reached for comment.

BPL’s Facebook page warned South Bimini customers their power supply would be off on Saturday while its workers repaired what was described as “a cable fault”. It gave no restoration timeline and provided no explanation as to the cause.

However, homeowners said they suspected a vessel had damaged the power cables running between north and south Bimini by dropping its anchor on them. They provided this newspaper with a photograph purporting to show BPL staff in a boat trying to repair the cables.

“Those cables should be encased in a concrete pipe, but they just lie in the channel,” one source said. “If they would tell us they can’t provide reliable power, that’s fine. We would come up with a solution.”

A similar situation happened in October 2020 when South Bimini was left without electricity for three days when a contractor cut the same BPL cable. BPL blamed a Water & Sewerage Corporation contractor for “damaging” the undersea cables that serve south Bimini when it started dredging activities on Saturday without the utility’s knowledge.

“A joint exercise between Water & Sewerage and a third party took place on Saturday, without the knowledge of BPL, to dredge in the harbour in the vicinity of the South Bimini ferry dock to locate and unearth a broken waterline,” BPL said.

“During the works, the main BPL subsea feeder cables that supply power to South Bimini were damaged. Power on North and South Bimini was interrupted because of the incident. While we were able to quickly restore power to North Bimini, the damaged cables meant South Bimini was left without power.”