Public urged to report leaning poles

Whilst the focus of late has been on advancing the restoration process for customers who are still without electricity following the passage of Hurricane Elsa, the Barbados Light and Power Company is urging members of the public to still report any leaning poles in their communities.

The advice came recently from BL&P’s Director of Asset Management, Rohan Seale, during a Light & Power update on the Hurricane Elsa restoration process, where he encouraged persons to utilise the ECI Restore app, which can be downloaded via the Apple iStore or Google Play platforms.

“We have an app, the ECI Restore app, and where that is appropriate, persons can place it in the app or they can call our emergency centre to report those poles,” Seale remarked.

He said, “Poles lean for a variety of reasons, but all of our poles and infrastructure that we plant, we attach a wire that goes down to the ground which we call a stay – to stay our facilities – but unfortunately that doesn’t occur in every instance.

“As we mentioned for our third party attachers (the telecommunications companies), they also have the obligation to attach a stay. That also creates some challenges for us, but where those instances occur, we are happy to receive those calls because that supplements the inspections that we also perform. We have a group that actually inspects all of our facilities, to pick up both rotten and leaning poles and we will continue to address them,” Seale further commented.

In  the interest of safety, Seale is asking members of the public not to place themselves in harm’s way by interfering with any poles or wires that need fixing.

“If they see or identify any safety issue, please call us. Do not seek to address it yourself, and we will take it from there,” he assured.

As of yesterday, the BL&P company indicated on its social media pages that it was down to its final 4 200 customers as work advanced over the weekend. The company however sought to give a glimpse of some of the damage its crews continue to face in the aftermath of Hurricane Elsa, as they work to restore power to members of the public. Such damage includes burning, leaning and broken poles, downed wires, tripping fuses and damaged assets on poles.

“These types of damages require complex work, some of which includes relinking fuses, multiple pole replacements and repairs, line repairs, transformer replacements, conductor repairs and in the more rural areas, tree trimming work,” the Light and Power noted.

The company however sought to reassure affected customers by stating, “In spite of this, we remain committed to safely doing whatever it takes to return power to you.”

(RSM)