BL&P starts prep for 2022 hurricane season

It’s been less than two weeks since the end of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season but the Barbados Light & Power Company (BL&P) has already started its preparations for 2022.

This was revealed on Friday by Director of Operations Johann Greaves, who said the utility company had learned valuable lessons from the 2021 season that ended on November 30.

It was the third most active season on record and was highlighted by a freak storm and the passage of Hurricane Elsa.

Greaves said BL&P would not have been able to achieve what it did had it not been ready and prepared.

In relation to the freak storm, he said the utility company had never before seen such a short and intense series of lightning strikes on its network, with 46,290 strikes in less than an hour.

Greaves said lightning hit poles and trees, causing limbs and, in some cases, entire trees to fall, which resulted in damage to BL&P power lines and hardware.

“These events gave us the opportunity, however, to review our processes and our systems and to tweak them where necessary for the remainder of the season, and that was a good driver for what lay ahead,” he said.

The BL&P official noted that shortly after that, Hurricane Elsa passed and presented a different challenge. He said no part of Barbados was left unscathed.

Greaves said it led to the largest restorative effort on the island since the passage of Tropical Storm Tomas in 2010.

“It was a sure reminder that the likelihood of a weather event shifting from low to medium to high is always present, and as a utility, we have to continuously be in a state of readiness and constantly build on lessons learnt from one year to another.

“Now, looking ahead and planning for the 2022 hurricane season we will continue to leverage tools and technologies to a greater degree. We have completed our review of the events of the 2021 hurricane season and have already started to implement improvements for the next season,” Greaves said.

“As always, there were lessons learnt during the 2021 hurricane season now behind us. Could we have done better? Of course, we could. As a utility, we know the need for improvement is always critical to our ability to progress.”

He said the BL&P was committed to making further improvements on its maintenance programme, improving customer awareness pertaining to tree management, and working more closely with telecoms providers in relation to their infrastructure on BL&P poles.

It was disclosed that during the season, BL&P partnered with the Barbados Association of Retired Persons (BARP).

Trustee of the BARP Charitable Trust, Reverend Clayton Springer, said “good things” had been happening as a result of the partnership.

He said in 2020 it was recognized that elderly persons on the island were experiencing challenging circumstances, many of them related to housing conditions.

As a result, said Reverend Springer, BL&P provided financial assistance to BARP to help solve some of the housing issues.

“From the funds that were given to the BARP Charitable Trust we were able to assist persons whose roofs were problematic,” Springer said, revealing that about 10 persons got help with roof repairs.

He said a rigorous investigation was undertaken to determine which persons would receive help, since the funds could not cover everyone who applied for assistance. (RB)