…but electricity and phones stay on

While the flow of water was affected as a result of the nationwide shutdown, other essential services like electricity and telecommunications remained unaffected. According to Belize Electricity Limited and Belize Telecommunications Limited, while many of their employees did not report to work, the two companies already had in place measures to secure their operations and quickly put them into effect.

Dawn Sampson, Corporate Communications Manager, B.E.L.
?Electricity really is an essential service so we have to make sure that we have our plans in place. We have hospital facilities countrywide that are depending on our service. The media, you all are depending on us for service to communicate to get information out to viewers so we have to make sue we have proper plans in place.?

?Basically we have employees stationed at our most critical substations countrywide.?

Jacqueline Woods
?How many employees showed up today??

Dawn Sampson
?I don?t have that figure at the moment, Jackie but we have told our employees that if there is safety issue preventing them from reaching work, not to put themselves at risk. The safety of employees is definitely apriority here as well as the safety of our customers.?

Karen Bevans, Head of Marketing/Public Relations, BTL
?We normally have an emergency preparedness plan in place and we implemented that since earlier this week. We started on Monday to make pre-emergency arrangements, which we made plans to boost up our security to ensure that we have our senior management team on standby at different locations so that they could substitute in areas where we may not have adequate amount of staff and all the plans were made. Yesterday evening we kicked in the entire plan and we started all our preparations and this morning all our senior management staffs were dispatched to the areas that we know we need to boost up to ensure the communications continue. For example we had management staff at our operator centre because the public may need assistance in placing calls and we also have additional security at all our exchange locations to just avoid to try to minimise any kind of mischievous act that may happen.?

A drive through the city’s downtown showed that most businesses either supported the action or were intimated enough to remain closed. Likewise primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions did not hold any classes. The police and BDF soldiers remained on high alert and stationed at strategic locations. It is not certain how many motorists were delayed on the Northern Highway but around four thirty this morning someone dumped a truck load of sand in the middle of the Haulover Bridge in an effort to prevent vehicles from entering the city. The mess was quickly cleaned up and the area remained under tight security for the most of the day.