Mexican generator failure blacks out Belize

The tragedy which struck Barry Bowen Monday morning could easily have been repeated last night, as shortly before 10:00 the entire nation was plunged into darkness–at least that part of the nation served by BEL’s national electricity grid. According to BEL, the massive power outage was caused when a large newly commissioned generator in Mexico experienced a sudden failure. The result was load shedding which put out the lights in all of Belize as well as neighbouring Chetumal. BEL’s Dereck Davis told News Five that the grid was also receiving power from the Mollejon Hydro Plant at the time, but the tripping of the Mexican line led to an automatic cutoff of Mollejon. Twenty minutes later, while BEL was warming up its diesels, Mexican power was restored. Davis says the Mexican failure was an unusual occurrence caused by the breaking in of a new plant and should not happen again.