By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Power and Light (BPL) says about 1,000 customers in eastern New Providence lost supply during Friday night’s ‘microburst,’ with service now restored to all impacted areas.

The utility said the hardest-hit communities were re-energised within 24 hours, though one customer in San Souci remained without power as of yesterday because of a high-voltage underground cable fault.

BPL said the epicentre of the event was around Fox Hill Road South but by 8pm on Saturday, crews had re-energised and restored supply there, as well as to Kool Acres. Work also continued on reliability upgrades elsewhere, including Bethel Avenue, where an outage to redistribute load from an overloaded transformer prompted an immediate upgrade and the installation of an additional unit.

The storm struck around 9pm Friday, toppling trees and damaging infrastructure. BPL said crews mobilised within 45 minutes and worked through limited access in Imperial Park; replaced high-voltage poles on Fox Hill Road South after extensive tree damage; swapped two damaged transformers in High Vista; and cleared a faulty transformer and multiple downed high-voltage lines along Eastern Road near Chancery Lane.

Chief Operating Officer Anthony Christie said three poles were damaged at the epicentre and both low- and high-voltage lines were affected, chiefly by falling trees and lightning-induced surges that overloaded transformers. He added that underground networks were largely unaffected unless surges caused cable faults, as occurred in San Souci.

BPL said crews are continuing repairs in San Souci and completing the Bethel Avenue upgrades to strengthen the grid and reduce the risk of overload-related outages.