Abaco Residents Plunged Into Darkness for Hours

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ABACO, BAHAMAS – After weeks of power problems in New Providence, it was Abaco’s turn on Thursday to deal with extended outages, despite repeated assurances from Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) that crews were working to restore service.

The outage began shortly after 1PM on Thursday, leaving Central and South Abaco and the surrounding cays in darkness.

Throughout the day, Bahamas Power and Light provided a series of updates through its Northern Bahamas WhatsApp channel.

The first was sent just after 1PM, after it was said that there was a problem with one of the generation units at the Wilson City Power Station, which caused the outage.

Power expected to be restored by 2:30PM, but that deadline came and went.

By 4:33PM, BPL said repairs to the generation unit were completed, and restoration was underway, but there was no time given for when customers could expect their lights to be back on.

As the hours passed residents remained in the dark.

At 7:47PM, BPL said crews had run into unforeseen issues while trying to re-energize the Wilson City Power Station, and that they were “continuing to troubleshoot the problem.”

Then at 8:11PM, the company reported that one of the generation units was energized, but tripped offline while crews attempted to restore power.

Around 11PM, BPL’s Northern Regional Manager, Marvin Green, shared a video with him providing an update on the outages.

While many Abaconians said they appreciated the regular updates, the length of the outage is a major concern.

Abaco resident Roscoe Thompson says the impact goes far beyond the inconvenience of losing power.

Abaco Resident – Roscoe Thompson

“ It affects our tourism. It affects visitors that are staying here, residents, businesses, you know, shop owners. Especially during the day for businesses or places that don’t have a generator…[which] makes it difficult for them to operate.”

After the 11PM video update, residents did not receive another update on the outage until 9:36AM the next morning.

In that message, BPL said power had been restored to Scotland Cay at 10:38PM Thursday night, then to Murphy Town, Dundas Town and Forest Drive at 4:19PM Friday morning.

Power was restored in Central Abaco, Hope Town and Matt Lowe’s at 7:48AM.

However, even after those restoration efforts, another update was issued around noon Friday, advising customers on Guana Cay that repairs to a downed generation unit were underway, with a restoration window of 1:30PM.

Our News reached out to officials at BPL for an update into last night’s outage, however we were told that the updates they gave last evening were sufficient.