BPL disruption leaves Bimini resort employees in the dark

Mon, Aug 29th 2016, 09:03 AM

Employees of the Resorts World Bimini (RWB) property were without power for several days as Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) dealt with an underwater cable fault that disrupted electricity supply to employee dormitories and impacted other areas of the resort.

"On Saturday evening at 7 p.m., an underwater cable that provides power to Resorts World Bimini had a fault and there was some difficulty in trying to find out where that fault was and have it repaired," Arnette Ingraham, corporate communications manager at BPL, told The Nassau Guardian.

The fault was found and repairs were carried out late yesterday afternoon, according to Ingraham.

Power was restored shorty after 5:50 p.m.

"This wasn't a complete property-wide outage," Ingraham said. "There were parts of the Resorts World Bimini [property] that continued to enjoy electricity service courtesy of BPL. That, of course, would have been the hotel and the casino. Those continue to have power.

"Some of the areas that didn't have power were the property's dorms, where some of the employees live as well as probably some residential homes on the property.

"They would have been the ones that were impacted by the outage. The hotel and the casino never lost power."

Michelle Malcolm, director of public affairs at RWB, acknowledged that the electricity supply was interrupted on Saturday.

"The power outage affected several areas of the resort, including the employee dorms," she said in a press release.

The property has more than 600 employees.

Lloyd Edgecombe, a member of the Bimini District Council, claimed that visitors were disrupted during their stay.

"You had some people that were not able to stay because there were not enough accommodations with light," he said.

However, Malcolm dismissed claims that guests were disrupted.

"No guests were displaced during the power outage as electrical supply was restored to the Hilton hotel and Bimini Bay villas within hours of the initial outage," she said.

Malcolm pointed out that the resort officials were in constant contact with officials at BPL, who flew in on Monday to access the situation.

Edgecombe lamented the fact that employees had to endure disruption in electricity supply.

"I drove up there last night [Monday] and you had employees outside sleeping all over the place [because] the dormitories are too hot, there is no air conditioner, there is no water," he said.

Don Alleyne, Guardian Staff Reporter

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