No glorious Jamaica 50 because of power outages
Published:Saturday | August 11, 2012 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
I would like to contribute by relating my experiences in relation to the matter of the recent power outage.
News reports on TVJ have repeatedly quoted the Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd attributing the incident to a lightning strike at the Duhaney Park installation and the time of the outage as around midnight August 5, 2012.
Later, another term was used - not as specific as the first - but seemingly to be of an incident outside their control.
My recollection of the incident as a resident of Highgate, St Mary, is as follows.
I was at home when at approximately 6 p.m., the power went. It was raining lightly for most of the day and up to that point.
Power was restored at 6:57 p.m. I turned on my television set to hear the 7 p.m. news cast. Before Michael Sharpe could complete reading the headlines, the power went again.
This situation remained so until 10:10 a.m. Monday, August 6, 2012, when power returned.
Between 10:10 a.m. and 2 p.m., there were approximately six breaks because of more outages, which occurred every 30 minutes.
To add insult to injury, the services of the National Water Commission had been withdrawn since Saturday afternoon, August 4, 2012 at about 4 p.m. There was no resumption until Tuesday, August 7.
Something is wrong
You can imagine what a glorious Independence 50th anniversary we had.
I have no idea what was the cause or who was responsible. All I know is that something is wrong and we should not allow anyone to pull the wool over our eyes. Well, not mine anyway.
There was no storm or hurricane, only a little rain and a 20-mile-an-hour wind on Sunday. What really happened? Let the responsible party or parties be honest and admit what went wrong and who did wrong to bring such a tragedy on us at such a critical moment in Jamaica's history. Also, suitable restitution should be made to citizens.
Basil L. Downer
Highgates, St Mary