Officials of The Bahamas Electricity Corporation said Monday that they are not responsible for any appliances or equipment damaged in the lightening storms over the weekend that resulted in New Providence being plunged into darkness.
“BEC cannot control Mother Nature,” said General Manager Kevin Basden, during a press conference on Monday morning at the corporation’s headquarters that was called to explain what led to the island-wide blackout.
“But we will do our best to minimize any possible damage. Lightening is thousands of volts of electricity and it can impact customers not only on the BEC system, but directly as well, like our telephone systems. And so that aspect of Mother Nature is beyond our control.”
Up to last evening, BEC officials said that power had been restored to most of New Providence, but a few pockets – like areas along Cowpen Road – were still without power.
Mr. Basden said that during the lightening storm around 6:38 Saturday evening, a disruption on the power system resulted in the first outage.
“A number of generators and overhead lines were also damaged as a result of the lightening strike,” he explained.
“This caused further outages to some customers during the morning and early afternoon of Sunday, September 11 due to limited generation. All supplies were restored by mid-afternoon.”
But that restoration period was short lived.
At about 6:08pm Sunday during a subsequent lightening storm, there was another disruption of the power system, resulting in another island-wide outage.
Officials said all this occurred while repairs to some of the generators that were damaged by Saturday’s lightening storm were still underway.
“Restoration of supplies began immediately, notwithstanding the adverse circumstances due to the damage of the night before,” Mr. Basden said.
“It should also be noted that while we are aware of the inclement weather based on reports from the Met Office and put contingency plans in place to address any possible outages, the Corporation was limited in its response due to the extent of lightening storm which occurred. It is a fact that while one can take steps to minimize damage, one cannot control nature or the impact thereof.”
Mr. Basden added that while the Corporation has taken a number of steps to protect the power system during lightening storms – like the installation of lightening arrestors, auto re-closers and overhead earth wires in some instances – there are no guarantees of 100 percent protection from lightening.
“We did have damage to our equipment and infrastructure,” Mr. Basden said.
“This particular storm system was very severe. The type of damage we saw was not ordinary. We had a number of transformers that failed, cables that were damaged as well as other overhead equipment. On Saturday, there were generators that suffered or experienced damage as a result of lightening. Repairs to a number of them have been done. But we are still working on one or two.”
Some consumers had been concerned that the outages were the result of heightened industrial action by the Bahamas Electrical Workers Union, which last week continued its go-slow in the wake of outstanding industrial issues.
Mr. Basden declined to comment on this specifically, saying, “What I can say is that the focus of BEC is the restoration of supplies to its customers. All the difficulties that we experienced were due to the lightening storm which was beyond anyone’s control.”
By: Macushla N. Pinder, The Bahama Journal
