By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas needs to have “a major rethink” over its electricity infrastructure and coastal/Family Island building codes following Hurricane Matthew’s devastation, a leading insurance executive said yesterday.

Patrick Ward, Bahamas First’s president and chief executive, told Tribune Business that this nation “can learn a lot of lessons” to ensure it is better prepared to withstand a similar catastrophic storm in the future.

He suggested that the Bahamas needed to focus on whether to place electricity cables and wires underground, as opposed to overhead, pointing out that power was restored to subdivisions with ‘buried’ infrastructure much more quickly in Matthew’s wake.

Mr Ward also called for more “robust” enforcement of the Bahamas’ building code in the Family Islands, given that properties in North Andros seemed to have suffered worst - a number collapsing - during Matthew’s passage.

And he also suggested that even stricter building codes may need to be applied to properties built on or near the coastline, given that it was now almost “inevitable” that these would suffer storm surge/water damage during a hurricane.

“I think it’s one we can learn a lot of lessons from,” Mr Ward told Tribune Business of Matthew. “The country’s infrastructure has to have a major rethink.

“Those areas that had electricity supply lines underground had supply restored relatively quickly, and those that did not were waiting to be restored. That’s one aspect.”

Subdivisions such as Eastwood and Winton Meadows had their electricity supply restored within 24 hours of Matthew’s passage, due to their transmission and distribution network being located underground.

This protected them from Matthew’s winds, but Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) likely lacks the resources - financial, technical, manpower and equipment - to put its nationwide transmission and distribution network underground.

Whether such a requirement could be mandated for future subdivisions, though, remains a possibility.

Mr Ward, meanwhile, called for better enforcement of the Bahamas Building Code outside New Providence, especially in the more sparsely-populated Family Islands.

“The enforcement around Building Code issues needs to be more robust in certain areas, particularly outside Nassau,” he told Tribune Business.

Mr Ward said the benefits of constructing properties to Code standard could also be seen on New Providence, adding: “If you look at some of the newer buildings built to code, it’s clear they performed reasonably well, and some buildings not built to code standard didn’t perform.”

Given that devastation inflicted on communities and properties built close to the shoreline in New Providence, Grand Bahama and Andros, Mr Ward suggested they made need enhanced Building Codes specific to their needs.

“I would also say that there needs to be some rethink of what is allowed from a building perspective on the coastline,” Mr Ward told Tribune Business.

“Clearly, those areas are very, very exposed. I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s now almost inevitable there’s going to be a loss on the coastline every time there’s a hurricane event.

“If we’re going to build on the coastline, there needs to be a rethink about how that is done and the code requirements that might be different from a house that is built inland.”