The Tribune

• Updates can be found on the BPL Facebook page HERE

AT 8:35pm Friday night as Bahamas Power and Light technicians were about 70 percent along in the process of bringing the island back from an island-wide blackout, there was a major setback. The system encountered a secondary problem, which by 8:52 pm, had been isolated.

“We are restarting the energizing process,” said a spokesman as he apologised for the added inconvenience.

Shortly after 7pm it was reported that the lights had been off at the Princess Margaret Hospital for about 20 minutes with the generator not switching on. All the maternity wards were in darkness. However, by 8:40 pm it was reported that the hospital was on line and expected full restoration in another 90 minutes.

By 8:19 pm a BPL spokesman made the following statement:

“Carmichael, part of Cowpen Road and parts of Lyford Cay are now on. We will update again shortly.

“Customers in the Thompson Boulevard area, Oakes Field, Blue Hill Road north and south, have had their service restored. We are working to stabilize the system and bring on more customers now. We will update again shortly.

“Customers on Wulff Road up to Mackey Street are now on. We are working to bring customers back as quickly and safely as possible. Updates will continue.

“We have isolated the problem that caused the major outage, which started at 6:09pm. At 6:40pm the outage became island wide. However, we were able to bring our first customers back online at 6:50pm. The issue, which was a transmission failure and not a loss of generation, has been initially identified as a failure of a major transmission line between our Blue Hill and Big Pond Power stations.

“Customers on JFK and West Bay are now on. East Street South has been energized. Customers on West Bay, west of Blake Road, Caves Village, Fr. Charlotte, Fish Fry, Western Esplanade and parts of Paradise Island are all on, ” the corporation reported.