Heavy rainfall & thunderstorms affected BVIEC's infrastructure causing outages
While the Category 5 hurricane did not directly impact the Virgin Islands (VI), heavy rainfall and thunderstorms associated with the storm impacted the infrastructure of the Wilfred Smith Power Station, leading to extended power outages across the Territory.
The BVIEC said the effects of Hurricane Erin also caused “some equipment failure” at the power station, which hampered restoration efforts.
Latest update
In a live Facebook update this morning, Mr Kamal Haynes, BVIEC’s Public Relations and Marketing Media Manager, spoke with engineers Isaiah Jacobs and Daymian Jennings, who gave the latest on the affected communities.
Mr Jacobs informed that Virgin Gorda is completely affected and without power, as well as “a few issues” in the East End community, where repairs to the transmission line are needed.
“Coming back all the way to Long Bush, we have two feeders that are currently active, and those areas that would be affected are parts of Road Town, Baughers Bay, Kingston, Bush Road and all the way up until the Long Swamp area,” he explained.
Anegada & Jost van Dyke
Mr Jennings informed that restoration efforts on Anegada are ongoing, and parts of the sister island are already with power.
Updates for Jost van Dyke, he said, will be given later as he will be taking “a boat ride over to assess the situation”.
He said, work is currently ongoing on the Eastern End, explaining, “One of the main lines that sends power to the eastern end has to be repaired, so we’re going to repair that first and get power back on in the East and in Virgin Gorda.”
An issue at the Pockwood Station in the Western end is being worked on, and once that is complete, he said residents there can expect power to start being restored “in a couple of hours”.
Power has since been restored for most parts of West End.
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15 Responses to “Heavy rainfall & thunderstorms affected BVIEC's infrastructure causing outages”
But appreciate the hard work in difficult/unsafe situations that the BVIEC do.
Thank you BVIEC!
Blessed we weren’t in the eye of this Cat 5
We have a real problem keeping water in the pipes and electricity in the cables in addition to not having any roads suitable for vehicles.
This outlook is not good and $30Million of the $100Million already squandered.
God help us.