A fleet of bucket trucks, equipment and linesmen from the United States based electrical company Power Secure arrived for licensing and inspection yesterday at the Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium, the temporary location for the Road Traffic Department.

As the effort to fully restore electricity supply to New Providence approaches two weeks since Hurricane Matthew passed, crippling the capital's electrical grid, Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) yesterday admitted there are 12,000 customers who remain in the dark.

That number represents customer accounts, not people; people like those who have expressed extreme frustration on social media and local talk shows.

But as the breaking point may be nearing for many left without electricity, BPL announced that the final stages of the recovery effort should go much more smoothly than that heavily criticized effort so far. The company last night said it has not only doubled its manpower on New Providence, but has also doubled its fleet with the help of parent company PowerSecure, in an effort to complete restoration of the power supply to all as soon as possible.

BPL said 24 utility vehicles arrived in the capital from the U.S. Tuesday morning.

"BPL's management company, PowerSecure, brought in 20 utility vehicles including pick-up trucks, bucket trucks, and digger derricks to assist its road crews in completing work in several communities," said BPL in a statement.

"Also arriving Tuesday morning were four BPL vehicles which included three bucket trucks and one digger derrick.

"A bucket truck and the digger derrick were sent to Andros on Tuesday afternoon to assist crews there in their restoration efforts.
"The other two bucket trucks will be added to BPL's permanent fleet of vehicles in New Providence.

BPL CEO Pamela Hill said, "These vehicles are an important part of our plan to get close to 100 percent restoration within the next few days.

"Our BPL team with the help of local and international partners has substantially restored supply to many of our customers; however, we still have more than 12,000 New Providence customers without power.

"We are using the most aggressive approach we have available to us to expedite power restoration for these consumers. Our plan is to deploy these vehicles in earnest across the island and saturate the areas where we still have some challenges to get the power back on as quickly as we can."

BPL said it had originally anticipated that the utility vehicles "would have been on island sooner; however, adverse weather conditions, including nine-foot seas, prevented the ship from leaving port in the United States".

"Our goal was to get the vehicles here not only in a timely manner but while ensuring the safety of the sailing crew and the cargo. Even without the trucks, our crews worked around the clock restoring supply to different parts of the island," said PowerSecure President of Utility Infrastructure Ronnie Brannen.

"Now that the trucks are here, we can work more efficiently to get the power back on to those customers who lost supply after Hurricane Matthew."

BPL said with the help of local contractors, CARILEC teams, and PowerSecure, it has an aggressive plan to be "close to full restoration by the end of the week".

"BPL expects that past this date only a small number of customers may still be impacted and the company will continue its aggressive campaign to reach 100 percent restoration," the company said.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian