Christopher Hanna shows two of his cars that were damaged dur to rising water during Hurricane Matthew

Several residents of St. Andrews Beach Estates said yesterday they are disgraced, frustrated and disappointed after almost two weeks without power supply following the passage of Hurricane Matthew.

"It's a shame." said Christopher Hanna, a resident of the area. "It's a disgrace.

"But I don't even look at BPL (Bahamas Power and Light) as the disgrace.

"I look at the government as the disgrace because if you are going to bring a company inside the country and the company doesn't know how this island runs, and when something like this happens, they tend to drag their feet.

"It's a disgrace on the government side."

Hanna said for him, life without power means a life of inconvenience.

"When you go to work, you have to be well dressed," he said.

"You could have water in the house but if you don't have electricity to move around to see what you are doing, it's very inconvenient. You have to wash your clothes, you have to press your clothes and more.

"It's very inconvenient and it's stressful.

"This is the people suffering because of the government not taking action, just talking."

Hanna's mother said her fear is that she will still be billed despite her lack of service for the past two weeks.

"Don't bill me for a service that I haven't had," she said.

"I haven't had light from the 5th of October and today is the 18th and I still haven't had light.

"I can't iron my clothes. I have to go to work mashed up and I can't do [anything] that I need current to do.

"I don't want them to send me any bill.

"I'm not paying for no light bill for service that I did not have."

Hanna said after the storm they lost two Volkswagen Beetle cars because the storm surge rose so high.

"When the water went back there, there were even fish in the yard," he said.

He used his fingers to show the length of the fish at almost eight inches.

Around the corner from the Hanna residence is the home of Chris Darling.

Darling said much of his frustration comes from everything in his refrigerator having to be thrown out after spoiling.

"There's nothing in the fridge. We can't get no power, can't get no light, can't get no water, no nothing," he said.

"So I'm not liking it too much at all. It's complicated, everything is complicated. I'm frustrated and don't know what to do.

"Whatever BPL [is] doing now [it isn't] working. They need to switch cause it [isn't] working."

Arnette Ingraham, corporate communications manager at Bahamas Power and Light, said yesterday the power company had restored power to 85 percent of its residential customers on New Providence.

Ingraham added that a team was in St. Andrews Beach Estates yesterday carrying out works where two of the poles were still down.

Derrick Bowe, another resident, who was still trying to do repairs on his roof, said he is just trying to get back to some type of normalcy.

Bowe said he was working in Mayaguana before the hurricane passed but came back to New Providence to check on his house.

He said he returned home to find three of the windows broken and the roof needing 30 bundles of shingles to be repaired.

"We are pecking through it," Bowe said. "We are trying to make the best out of everything. I'm just hanging in there. What happens, happens. If it don't happen, it don't happen."

Bowe said he has seen the BPL trucks driving in the area for the past two days but he had yet to see results.

"I think they say they [are] fixing the critical problems first, so I guess we aren't critical," he said. "Just ride it out, ride it out, that's all I [am] doing."

When asked about living without power in the aftermath of the hurricane, another resident of the area who did not want his name published said, "We might be a third world country but we are used to first world standards.

"We might be a small and accepting community but we are used to a certain lifestyle. We are used to a certain quality of life. We have been sadly disappointed; sadly disappointed as a people and as a community."

Sloan Smith, Guardian Staff Reporter

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