For more than eight hours Saturday, Grand Bahama experienced an island-wide power outage and now executives at the Grand Bahama Power Company (GBPC) are working feverishly to determine the cause of the blackout.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Rodger Johnson, Director of Community Relations at the GBPC, explained that management were still in all-day meetings, assessing information and formulating plans.
“On Friday as a result of a lighting strike shortly before 6:00 a.m., we lost supply to almost the whole island,” said Mr. Johnson. “Then on Saturday, there was another outage which occurred about 10:15 a.m. We lost power everywhere.”
He added that an investigative process began immediately following the outage and some discoveries were made.
“One thing that we found is some insulators were newly broken,” Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Johnson admitted that this discovery can be a link to or maybe part of the reason for Saturday’s island-wide blackout.
Despite this find, Mr. Johnson stressed that crews are carrying out conclusive investigations to determine the exact causes of the power failure.
“And once we would have completed those, we would make a full report,” he said.
Asked if Friday’s incident may have had a direct effect on Saturday’s blackout, Mr. Johnson said, “There is a good possibility.”
He reiterated that following the investigations, GBPC will give a full press briefing on its findings.
“We want to apologize to our customers because the outage was extensive,” said Mr. Johnson, noting that the last customer was back on line by 5:00 p.m.
“We will review all of the facts and make a final determination,” added Mr. Johnson.
By BARBARA WALKIN, Senior FN Reporter
