Belize Electricity Limited’s Dangriga substation burglarized

A reward is also being offered for another incident that happened in southern Belize. Early Saturday morning, employees of Belize Electricity Limited’s Dangriga substation discovered that the plant had been burglarized. Six utility grade batteries that power equipment used to monitor and control the system were stolen. Batteries may not sound like much, but these are not the regular batteries. In fact, their removal leaves the system vulnerable and could lead to lengthy power outages in the area. Corporate Communications Manager at B.E.L., Dawn Sampson Nunez told us today that the batteries seem to be a hot commodity in the south because this is not the first burglary at the substation.

Dawn Sampson Nunez, Manager, Corporate Communications, B.E.L.

dawn sampson nunez

“The batteries are specialized batteries. B.E.L. is one of few organizations in the country that actually has the batteries so obviously the person or persons who committed this crime actually have a very specific purpose in mind. The key issue for us—or is should say for our customers—is the impact that it actually has on the performance of our systems. The impact that is has on providing reliable power supply to our customers in southern Belize. The batteries allow us to first of all, monitor the substations remotely and on a twenty-four hour basis.  The second purpose; it allows us to actually shut off the power intentionally at critical times to, for example, when there’s a lightning storm we would shut off the power briefly to prevent damage to B.E.L.’s equipment and also customers’ equipment. So the batteries serve a very important purpose and it’s not your everyday battery so it’s very important for us to try and get to the bottom of this and we would really appreciate the public’s assistance if they could provide any information that would lead to an arrest or recovery of the items, we are offering a reward of about a thousand dollars. This isn’t the first time, unfortunately that they’ve gone off with these batteries; I understand about three times over the past year so we really need to get to the bottom of this.”

Delahnie Bain

“All three incidents were at the same location?”

Dawn Sampson Nunez

“Yes, all three incidents were from the Dangriga substation. We put security measures in place but somehow these guys find a way to get around them and carry out this crime.”

Anyone with information can call the nearest police station or contact B.E.L. at 0-800-235-2273.