Beetham residents count loses after 33-hour power outage

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Af­ter spend­ing al­most a day and a half (some 33 hours) with­out elec­tric­i­ty, sev­er­al Beetham Gar­dens, Laven­tille, res­i­dents say they are grate­ful pow­er has been re­stored, as they re­called the dif­fi­cul­ties of do­ing their dai­ly rou­tine with­out ac­cess to ap­pli­ances and the loss of hun­dreds of dol­lars in food items.

They al­so ex­pressed mixed views on claims that pow­er to their com­mu­ni­ty was de­lib­er­ate­ly not re­stored in an ef­fi­cient man­ner fol­low­ing a mil­lion-dol­lar fire at the ca­ble yard of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of T&T (TSTT) work cen­tre in Laven­tille on Sat­ur­day.

The al­le­ga­tion was made yes­ter­day in a Face­book post by Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle, who claimed he was told that T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) of­fi­cials were “bat­tling” with a “UNC Min­is­ter” who pur­port­ed­ly sent in­struc­tions not to re­store elec­tric­i­ty to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“One se­nior of­fi­cial was brought to tears. He in­di­cat­ed he has nev­er seen this lev­el of hate, spite and racism in his pro­fes­sion­al life,” Mar­celle wrote.

How­ev­er, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, in re­sponse via What­sApp, dis­missed Mar­celle’s claims, not­ing the dis­rup­tion in ser­vice at the Beetham Gar­dens was due to elec­tri­cal lines that were dam­aged as a re­sult of the fire.

“Mar­celle’s strat­e­gy to use this sit­u­a­tion to cre­ate mis­chief is deeply con­cern­ing, as he seeks to put pol­i­tics ahead of the safe­ty of his con­stituents,” Padarath said.

“Throw­ing out con­ver­sa­tions with name­less, anony­mous em­ploy­ees of T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) is an at­tempt to lend le­git­i­ma­cy to a bo­gus, fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry.”

“I am ad­vised, from our se­nior en­gi­neers and man­age­ment, that the fire which oc­curred at TSTT’s com­pound in Laven­tille com­pro­mised the elec­tric­i­ty lines with­in the area and there­fore it was an ab­solute mat­ter of safe­ty, that the T&TEC took the nec­es­sary steps to en­sure the wel­fare and well-be­ing of res­i­dents with­in the area,” he added.

Al­so re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia ques­tions via email, T&TEC said the dis­rup­tion in ser­vice was due to af­fect­ed pow­er lines, with the safe­ty of res­i­dents in near­by com­mu­ni­ties like the Beetham Gar­dens in mind. It said elec­tric­i­ty was re­stored as of 7.54 am yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Beetham Gar­dens yes­ter­day, shop­keep­er Ma­hase Bhooram said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly up­set over the lengthy wait for elec­tric­i­ty to be re­stored, not­ing that sev­er­al buck­ets of ice cream be­gan to melt and had to be dis­card­ed.

Bhooram, who has lived in the Beetham Gar­dens for over 40 years, said he be­lieved Mar­celle’s com­ments, as he felt there was no oth­er ex­pla­na­tion for the de­lay.

“I be­lieve what he said and you know why?

“Why was it on­ly the Beetham that was af­fect­ed? Nowhere else they took the cur­rent, on­ly on the Beetham. That is un­fair, look how long we liv­ing around here. We couldn’t even sleep last night, it’s on­ly now I start to clean up my place,” he said.

Ma­hase said he had to dis­card close to $500 worth of ice cream, point­ing to a stack of plas­tic buck­ets and an emp­ty deep freez­er in his home.

An­oth­er shop­keep­er, who asked not to be named, said he was al­so up­set over the pow­er out­age, not­ing that hun­dreds of dol­lars worth of chick­en parts had to be dis­card­ed as they be­gan to spoil with­out re­frig­er­a­tion.

“T&TEC is fail­ure! And I bet you that light bill still com­ing mon­thend, even with that dotish­ness they do with us. But we is poor peo­ple, so they can get away with it.”

How­ev­er, me­chan­ic Ian Joyeau said while the loss of pow­er for a day and a half was a ma­jor in­con­ve­nience to his busi­ness, he was not en­tire­ly con­vinced the lengthy re­sponse in re­con­nect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty was the re­sult of any ma­li­cious in­tent.

“That’s just spec­u­la­tion. I don’t have any ev­i­dence of that, so I can’t an­swer that. I am very glad that the elec­tric­i­ty is back.”

Joyeau said he was on­ly able to con­duct oil changes at his work­shop be­tween Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon and through­out Sun­day, as he was un­able to use any of his pow­er tools.

“If we get a black­out it would be at night, but this dis­rup­tion hit me re­al­ly hard. For two days I couldn’t do any­thing more than an oil change. I couldn’t even use my com­pres­sor. I had to do things the old school way and a lot of cus­tomers don’t have pa­tience to wait for you, as I can’t use any of my pow­er tools,” Joyeau said.

Joyeau joked that he had no in­ten­tion of even open­ing his shop un­til he saw his phone re­con­nect­ed with the charg­er on Mon­day.

Mean­while, a life­long Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dent and pen­sion­er Harold Guy said while he al­so lost some food items due to a lack of re­frig­er­a­tion be­tween Sat­ur­day evening and Sun­day, he was un­sure whether he be­lieved Mar­celle’s claims.

“I can’t give no com­ment on that, be­cause I have no in­for­ma­tion or any­thing. He (Mar­celle) could be telling the truth, but I can’t say ei­ther way be­cause I know noth­ing about it.”

Guy lament­ed that he al­so had to throw out some food­stuff as they were be­gin­ning to spoil, but tried to man­age as best as he could de­spite the in­con­ve­nience.

While in the Beetham Gar­dens, a ‘sta­t­ic’ (sta­tion­ary) po­lice ve­hi­cle was ob­served parked on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, near the wall of the Co­conut Grow­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (CGA) com­pound, while a sec­ond was seen on pa­trol with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

From Beetham Gar­dens, op­po­site the south­ern wall of the TSTT work cen­tre near the An­gos­tu­ra com­pound, smoke was still seen bil­low­ing over the wall, as jets of wa­ter were ob­served dous­ing por­tions of the ca­ble yard.

The fire of­fi­cer who was in­jured while fight­ing the blaze at the TSTT com­pound in Laven­tille on Sat­ur­day has been dis­charged from hos­pi­tal and is now rest­ing at home.

This was con­firmed by Fire Ser­vices’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keone Guy yes­ter­day.

Guy said the of­fi­cer was dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal on Sun­day af­ter­noon, adding he re­ceived treat­ment for su­per­fi­cial fa­cial burns and in­ter­nal dam­age caused by smoke in­hala­tion.

“He has some blis­ters from the flames. He is on some days’ leave and we wish him a speedy re­cov­ery as he con­tin­ues to rest at home,” Guy said.

How­ev­er, he did not di­vulge the of­fi­cer’s name.