BEL Looking to Wrap Up Post-Hurricane Power Restoration

As we mentioned, BEL’s teams continue to work in several areas of the Cayo and Belize Districts that were affected by Hurricane Lisa and still haven’t been able to regain power supply. BEL’s General Manager of Distribution Services, Herschel Armstrong, explains that they have been able to restore power for 99 percent of customers in the Cayo District, 98 percent in Belize City, and 95 percent in rural areas of the Belize District. Armstrong says that the teams are now addressing localized issues that are the cause of certain customers being without power, while their neighbour’s electricity has already been restored. 

Herschel Armstrong, General Manager, Distribution Services, BEL: “We have seen damages due to the storm to all our service aras in the central part of the country so the storm passed basically hitting Belize City all our rural areas in the Belize District and then our Cayo service areas Belmopan, the rural areas in Cayo, San Ignacio, Santa Elena. I believe that counts for somewhere around 50% of our customers and so at the all clear in fact before the all clear was given we were already out. We got permission from NEMO because we knew the work that lied ahead of us. We were out doing our assessments trying to make sure that we got ahead of this and so we know about half the customers were affected. At this point we have brought up somewhere around 99% of customers across the country. That said the last 1% is perhaps the hardest right ? We try to move systematically so we look at our system there is generation and then there’s the transmission system with substations and then now you step down to your distribution system, the distribution networks that feed customers in the different areas in the different cities and villages. So some of the  areas that remain out might be because the sections of the system we really badly damaged so for example on the George Price Highway going out beyond Hattieville going towards Belmopan I’m sure persons would have seen that there were large or extensive sections of our lines there that were down and so we have started those repairs but that is the type of work or job that takes some time.”