Barbados suffers blackout

Jun 18, 2013 News

A vehicle hit a power pole Sunday plunging Barbados into an island-wide blackout for over an hour, sending Electricity Company officials scampering to the media to explain the reason, with promises to ensure there is no repeat.
While power to some areas was restored within an hour after lights went out around 6pm, other districts suffered for about three hours, and Barbadians vented their rage yesterday on a popular call-in programme, ‘Down to Brasstacks’, expressing surprise that a simple vehicular accident can interrupt power supply to the entire country, and for so long.
The Barbados Light and Power Corporate Communication Manager, Jackie Marshall-Clarke, also got on radio to explain that the power shutdown, caused by the accident, should have been restricted to the immediate area of the mishap but, “the fault did not isolate and it fed right back into our generating system, and once again the protection mechanism would kick in, and from there a shut down occurred.
She added, “It so happens that when it shut down the generating system, it shut down the entire island, so that’s why we had an island-wide outage”
While apologizing, the power company spokeswoman noted that the power cut did not go much into the night. “The accident happened at 6:10pm and we started that restoration [of power] about 7pm, and we completed the restoration at 9:10. Unfortunately a few of the generators tripped off again at that point and some other customers were affected for another 40 minutes, so by 20 minutes to 10pm everybody would have had supply again.”
BLP Chief Operating Officer, Stephen Worme, also rushed to the media, and explained, “Faults like this happen from time to time, and the system and protective devices did the job they were designed to do. He assured that as it probes reasons for the power trip-out, the company would seek to ensure that there is no re-occurrence.
“We’re still in the preliminary stage of the investigation, as we do whenever we have a problem like this to see what we can do differently to avoid something like this occurring again.”
None of the island’s essential services such hospitals reported any outage as their back-up systems were immediately activated.
One year ago Barbadians suffered another black out, but on that occasion it was restricted to homes of some 12,000 persons out of a population just under 300,000.
In that June 3, 2012 incident, Worme had explained that an insulator failed.
Among areas affected at that time was Oistins, a popular spot for locals and tourists seeking fried fish and entertainment nightly.

Latest News

Barbados suffers blackout

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| April, 4th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

‘One Guyana’ 3×3 Quest tips off today

Twin tons from Anderson, Imlach steer Eagles back...

Race for quarterfinal spots commence today at MoE...

Marsh sets up Lucknow’s comfortable win...

Saints and GTI dominate as YBG Georgetown...

Carty misses ton, Hamilton (80) sets up tense...

Features/Columnists

The One-Man Republic

The U.S. “Joining” the Commonwealth: an unreasonable expectation

Polls – what they say, where I stand

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

Barbados suffers blackout

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| April, 4th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]