Freeport, Bahamas - The following is a statement made by president and CEO of Grand Bahama Power, Sarah McDonald which accompanies a video seen here:
Public Statement Oct. 27
It’s Day 21 of restoration and we continue to make progress in Grand Bahama. I’ll start with the most important statistic of all. Even with multiple crews, from different companies, working long hours under difficult conditions, many performing live line work, we have had no injuries. This is our goal – to work injury free. Starting last Friday, we began changing out our visiting crews as they grow weary of 16 hour days, 7 days a week. We have to be conscious of ensuring fatigue is managed so that we continue our safe restoration. As crews return home to their families, we are welcoming similarly-skilled and hard-working crews from our sister affiliates in the same numbers as are leaving. Our local crews and some of our contractors, who have also been working long hours, have started to take rotating rest days so that, again, we can continue to work safely.
In terms of progress on our system, as of late yesterday, we have safely restored about 8900 customers, representing approximately 46% of our customer base.
We have set over 1000 poles. We had some comments from customers about our rapid progress on pole replacement compared to our restoration of customers, so I wanted to share a bit of insight with you. We have Emera affiliate teams with special trucks – digger derricks, cranes, etc. – who are focusing just on transmission pole setting and they’ve made good progress. But setting the pole does not mean a customer gets energized. The distribution poles, along with the lines, and all the equipment and attachments on the poles still need to be repaired in order to begin energizing. We expect to be done with the transmission work by Monday so our pace of pole setting will decline.
Our large industrials are online now, so our generation load is about 50% of normal for this time of year. Importantly, many Grand Bahamians are now back to work. Freeport Harbour has been partially energized. Stat Oil is expected to be energized by early next week. Basic public services like the landfill and Wellfields are operational, although Wellfield 6 is experiencing an issue with their fuses so they are back on their generator. Many more businesses and banks will be energized by the weekend which again allows our island to return to something that feels normal.
With kids going back this week, schools were a focus for us. They are cleaned up of downed poles and wires and other debris, and power is being restored as that work is done. 12 schools have been energized so far.
We are also working with Cable Bahamas and BTC to maximize our collective restoration efforts.
Our purchasing team has been working to stay ahead of our line crews’ steady progress to ensure they have the materials they need to repair and rebuild. Our supply of transformers is low, despite ordering well in advance. We have been bumped by other shipments or delayed by weather. We were expecting 197 transformers tonight but have just been informed they will not sail. As long as the weather improves, 3 containers of transformers will be shipped every night going forward until the 1200 we have already identified are delivered. We were also anticipating the arrival of nine new trucks from Tampa Electric and SEC tonight, but the seas did not cooperate.
While there is still a great deal of work to do, we are proud of what we have been able to accomplish in the first 21 days following the storm. One example is that, despite the 15 miles of line and the now 85 poles that needed repair heading to the East End, our Transmission crews have chewed through that work at a pace surprising even to us. We’ll reach Stat Oil by early next week and, because the East End didn’t receive the same high winds as the West End, the amount of damage is such that we should be able to restore power to the East End by the middle of next week, including Sweetings Cay, Deep Water Cay and Water Cay. We just need to do an inspection of the underground boxes, transformers and lines between the mainland and the two Cays.
That takes us to Eight Mile Rock and another unexpected success. There was much more damage on the West End of the island than in most other areas and we knew that it would take multiple days and crews to address. But with considerable effort we have been able to prepare parts of Eight Mile Rock and will continue to do so, so that when the main distribution trunk that extends to that part of the island is restored, some customers in that area can be energized by Tuesday.
We are pleased to report that by early next week, customers in all areas of Freeport and the East End will have seen crews working in their neighbourhood, which should reduce the anxiety or concern that we have somehow forgotten an area. We haven’t. We followed our strategy of getting the most customers on in the shortest period of time and that has paid dividends. This is what we call the “first wave” of restoration. We estimated the number of days of work by feeder. We then prioritized the areas by number of customers. The crews fix the main distribution trunk over the course of 3-10 days. When they energize there are still individual customers or pockets without power because of localized damage but the crews move on to get the next large area of customers. The number of customers without power as we energize has ranged from 10% - 40%, depending on how much damage an area experienced. Now that we are near completion of the first wave, we are redeploying crews back to those areas to get individual services on.
A couple of examples may help illustrate. We now know that an area like Windsor Park and Bay has four days of effort to complete the “first wave” of repair which energizes the majority of the area. This work will begin tomorrow. Based on the scoping done we expect 5% of customers to still be without power. We have a plan to send the second wave back to that area early next week.
This would be very different from the work in the Maliboo Reef, Mayfield Park and Royal Bahamian Estates area where we started working on October 14th and expect to still be in there until tomorrow, all the while knowing there will still be about 20% - of customers in that area without power because of extensive damage. Crews will circle back starting mid next week to get those remaining customers back on.
An area that has drawn a lot of calls and negative posts on FaceBook is the Ridge, particularly from Inagua, Hawaii, Jamaica, Grenada and Fiji Avenues. The sentiment has been repeatedly expressed that they are always left to the end. This is due in part to the fact that the power line runs through the back of residential lots on a very narrow right of way. This right of way has grown over and there is a great deal of debris that needs to be removed, and multiple broken poles and lines down.
Starting today sanitation is cleaning out the vegetation and preparing the area for access for our crews. There are also fences that would block us from restoring power to these roads. If customers don’t remove these fences we will be forced to remove them, which we will do with as little damage to them as possible, and set them aside. We trust we will have the support of customers on these avenues to restore power to them by the end of the weekend. If we run into problems with any individual property it could stall our restoration.
We want customers to understand that different areas of the island sustained different levels of damage, and they may not see the damage but it still has an impact on them. Crews were in the Lucayan Beach area yesterday and will be there in full force tomorrow. In Royal Bahamian Estates we had poles pulled right out of the ground and thrown across the street. Many of the homes sustained damages so safe energization is still a ways off for those customers.
Our crews today are in a number of areas including:
The Police Station in Lucaya,
over the bridge in Derby and Caravel Bay,
Williams Town & East Beach Drive,
North Bahamia,
Eight Mile Rock
In addition we believe we can now safely energize the North Side of Pinder’s Point from Upper Zion Baptist North to the Harbour, picking up 70-100 more customers.
Again, for all of our customers: if your area has been energized but you are still without power, please ensure you log your outage with our Customer Service team at 352-8411 so we can plan for the crews to return, which we expect will be no more than 7 days after the end of the first wave. We believe that we will have the ability to reduce that time frame but we also need to respect that other, very complex issues may crop up and will have to be dealt with.
I want to talk a little about the far West End of our island, as the story is not as positive for those customers. As many of us know, the damage to the buildings and homes in that area was devastating. Many residents are still displaced. We have been informed that almost 3000 adults and 1500 children don’t have a safe place of their own and are being housed with family or in shelters, and supported by the local churches, social services, local businesses, the Ministry of Works and the GBPA. West End has lost approximately 70 homes and more than 400 homes suffered major damage. We understand that most of those homes would not be certified as safe to energize. With that kind of damage and home inspections still required, we won’t be sending restoration crews to these areas at this time. Our company, our employees, and all Emera affiliate crews working with us are troubled by the situation, and therefore, we will focus our community outreach to these areas.
Once the areas are declared safe in Lewis Yard and West End, please know that we will ensure power is restored as quickly as possible.
We have been able to assess every area and, using some state-of-the-art tools and expertise, we have a plan that lays out customers by area, when to expect the first wave to finish and to have enough resources to send the second wave within a week of departing an area. It would be too much to share all the details in this message. Tomorrow we will distribute a list by area to businesses, restaurants, churches and community groups and ask that they post it for customers without access to the internet. We’ll also have all the details by area published in the Freeport News, posted on our website so you can see when your area will be energized, and we’ll be posting the same information on our social media pages – Facebook and Twitter – so please look for it there as well.
The restoration planning information that we are sharing starting today will allow our customers who are still without power to plan, and hopefully better understand how our restoration process is planned and carried out. It challenges us to constantly weigh priorities. We get calls daily from people who are ill, or elderly and are struggling through the outage. And then we have public safety issues and the usual public necessities like water and sanitation to handle. We know that some customers will still be unhappy with the way we prioritize, but we can’t get everyone on at the same time so as I said in my first statement shortly following the passing of Hurricane Matthew, tough choices will have to be made and we are making them as best we can with the resources we have available.
The decision to share our restoration plan going forward, with details about areas and dates, is made with some trepidation because every plan can get off track. For instance, we were waiting for 175 transformers to arrive yesterday but due to customs delays, they won’t arrive until tonight. That kind of delay means, despite our detailed work plan, crews have to be redeployed to another area where restoration work doesn’t require transformers. This doesn’t mean we were wrong or purposely changed our plan. It just means we can’t control everything. Another example of something that impacts our plan is weather. If we get bad weather it slows us down as the crews can’t work as quickly. We ask for our customers’ patience, as we continually adjust our plan to deal with issues outside our control. We will update the plan daily and find ways to share it in every way we can throughout the island.
Every customer is important in our eyes, and we are pulling out all the stops to energize safely and efficiently. We ask that customers stay tuned so that you can be aware of adjustments to the plan that may impact you.
Lastly the recognition and thanks I can never fully do justice to in this format. Our employees, some of whom are still without power, working safely and so committed to customers. Our Emera affiliates and contractors who are away from their families while they assist us. Our local businesses supporting our crews and of course our customer’s patience and understanding as we restore following this unprecedented storm. I am immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, and abashed. Thank you all.
