The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

A “major cable fault” was the reason for an island-wide blackout that occurred Sunday afternoon, officials from Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) said.

According to a statement released by BPL’s public relations officer Arnette Ingraham, the cable fault “was responsible for shutting down generation, transmission and distribution networks on the island”.

She said that following an initial investigation, crews began restarting the failed engines and incrementally restoring supply to affected communities.

The blackout occurred shortly before 1pm.

“By 4.30pm, supply had been restored to approximately 70 per cent of BPL customers in New Providence and by 6.30pm supply was fully restored,” the statement said.

The statement added that BPL apologises to its customers affected by the outage on Sunday and a previous island outage that occurred on May 23.

“While neither outage was caused by a lack of generation capacity, BPL assures its customers that it is looking at all areas of its operation to improve system reliability,” the statement said.

Affected customers took to BPL’s Facebook page to vent their frustration.

One said: “The whole Carmichael is down. When will it be back up?”

“Thanks for an awful Sunday, still waiting in Carmichael to have power restored,” another resident said.

Some residents speculated on social media that a passing thunderstorm caused the outage.

The Bahamas Meteorology Department had issued a notice at noon of a mid-to-upper level trough that remained over the Bahamas and would continue to increase the chance of showers over the island.

Isolated showers and thunderstorms were expected in the afternoon for the capital while scatted showers and isolated thunderstorms were expected throughout the southeast Bahamas during Sunday night.