B.E.L. offers reward for saboteurs of poles

Since the start of the year there have been three incidents, which Belize Electricity Limited calls sabotage, to its power lines. The vandalism has inconvenienced residents with outages that lasted up three hours and the repairs will cost the company thousands of dollars, according to B.E.L.  And while the reason for the damage is perplexing, Vice President of Customer Care and Operations at B.E.L., Curtis Eck says it is also dangerous for the culprits because if any of the poles should fall, it could be fatal. The damages have spread to three different parts of the country but it is not known if they are linked. B.E.L. is now offering a reward of one thousand dollars for information that can bring the perpetrators to justice. News Five went along with Eck and B.E.L. personnel as they visited the site of the most recent damage… ten posts in Orange Walk.

Curtis Eck, Vice President, Customer Care and Operations, B.E.L.

Curtis Eck

“The first case was recognized in late January when we were doing patrols on the line supplying power to Orange Walk. Some of the poles—we found ten poles where some were chopped severely to the point of almost breaking and some were deliberately burnt. During that time there wasn’t any type of cane field burning at the time so what we recognize was that these were deliberate attempts to actually set the posts on fire. The second case occurred on third of March in Belize City, if you recall—that was a Wednesday—close to eight a.m. the entire city went out. We did our investigation later and we found near mile three on the Western Highway, residents after investigations, told us that they saw three Hispanic men run away from the site and they heard this loud bang. We looked at the conductor and we realized that someone had thrown some object on the line. The third incident occurred on the line going toward san Pedro. We have an overhead transmission line in Maskall that supplies san Pedro Town. In that area, similar to here we found two poles that were actually burnt to the ground. If you look at the area there wasn’t any type of bush fires or anything so we realized that again they were setting poles on fire deliberately.”

B.E.L. has increased air and ground patrols to prevent and detect the incidents.