More blackouts as bushfire cripples B.E.L.
The dry season is never kind to B.E.L. as low water at the Mollejon hydro plant forces the company to rely heavily on its aging diesel generators and bulk purchases from Mexico. But this year’s dry has been particularly cruel as equipment problems in Mexico have curtailed power supplies, dust has played havoc with high voltage insulators and even the construction of a new gas turbine plant has led to planned outages due to infrastructure modifications. Today the nation was plunged into blackout once again, this time due to a bush fire near Maskall. News Five’s Jacqueline Woods is just back from the scene where a large team of workers was busy trying to replace a burned pole. B.E.L. distribution manager John Balderamos says the situation should be corrected sometime tonight.
John Balderamos, Distribution Zone Manager, BEL
“If there is not sufficient water at Mollejon then we would probably have to do some kind of rotation or low shedding Belize City until we can get bulk power imported from Mexico. Presently we are trying to replace the pole that was burnt. The structure is two transmission poles only one got burnt but unfortunately there is still a stump in there to remove. Once that has been removed, then we will be able to plant a new pole and replace the hardware so that we can restore power.”
Jacqueline Woods
“Have you been able to assess the situation to see if any of the insulators were damaged?”
John Balderamos
“That cannot be stated at this time. I don’t know if the supervisor in charge will change the insulators or we will just try to energize the line. Once we have put the pole sin place but if the insulators are damaged and the lines trip out then we have to change those at that time.”
Jacqueline Woods
“How long is this work expected to take?”
John Balderamos
“Well, I do think in the next hour or two, I think we can get the stump removed an din another hour after that, the pole planted and we should try to finish and I don’t really want to commit myself to any time but we should try to b finished by nine or ten tonight.”
Jacqueline Woods
“How frustrating is this because I understand it was just three weeks ago you’ll had cleared this area?”
John Balderamos
“This is very frustrating and you know this is what its like. We try to do maintenance in the transmission line to prevent these kinds of things from happening and we just came through with our line clearing but we believe some hunters were probably using this pathway for hunting and you know someone probably got careless threw a cigarette or match or something like that and this is the result.”
B.E.L. is currently using three hour rotations that are impacting Dangriga, Belmopan, San Ignacio, Ladyville and Belize City.
