NASSAU, BAHAMAS — A fire early Wednesday morning completely ravaged Bahamas Power and Light’s (BPL) Nicholls Town power station, leaving approximately 1,300 consumers without electricity, with the area Member of Parliament describing the situation as “heart-wrenching.”
The community was gearing up for festivities this upcoming weekend, which North Andros and Berry Islands MP Leonard Lightbourne said was expected to provide a much-needed economic boost to the community. Those festivities have now been postponed to later this month.
“I’ve spoken to residents, and this is very hard for them. They were looking forward to the festivities, but right now, my priority is to see electricity restored to the community,” Lightbourne said.
Bahamas Power and Light issued a statement yesterday afternoon, acknowledging the catastrophic fire that occurred around 3 am at the Nichols Town Power Station. The company said that “significant progress” in the restoration process was made in the 12 hours following the event, with partial power expected to be online last night.
To address the situation, the company yesterday afternoon mobilized two units—one generating 1 MW and the other 500 kW—to the Nicholls Town power station. The company noted that while the two units will be insufficient to meet the total demand in North Andros, an additional 1.5 MW generator from the company’s family island operations should arrive on the island today.
The outage reportedly impacted around 1,000 residential consumers and 300 business customers.
Barnard Evans of the All Andros and Berry Island Regatta Committee, which had planned a series of activities in Andros for the upcoming weekend, said that it had no choice but to postpone the events until July 27 – 29.
“We would like to express our disappointment meant to all of our followers, home goers and sailors,” said Evans, while thanking BPL for their efforts to restore power to the community.
Evans noted that the committee is in discussions to ensure that all commitments which were made ahead of the event are honored. “The committee thanks everyone for their patience and understanding,” he said.
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