Last night we told you about the acts of sabotage committed against BEL on Saturday afternoon when 6 light poles were set on fire. While police have picked up some persons believed to be responsible for those acts, work is underway to restore and repair the damaged structures. But what does the sabotage look like on the ground? We today went to San Pablo to see.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
Since January of this year, there have been 17 acts of sabotage like this. 20 poles have been cut down costing the company in excess of $1 million.
Luciano Novelo, BEL Line Supervisor
"We have here three structures that were cut and set on fire. Normally to replace these structures each one will then take about 5 to 6 hours to replace one structure. So this will actually take, call it about 3 days to do the three structures here in this area. And not only this area but we have more which were cut like this one that you see here. We have also at Maruba, close to Maskall, another three structures that were damaged. So to do this actually it will take a little time and we will be experiencing probably some outages, planned outages, so that we can bring back the system to normal."
For now however the poles which hold up 115 KV lines have had to be stabilized as best as possible. In these three cases they have had to be secured with guide wires to ensure that they don't fall down. And while this is how BEL personnel have been dealing with this type of sabotage, Novelo says that cutting and burning poles is not the only way the company is being sabotaged.
Luciano Novelo,
"First they started with throwing lines to short circuit the transmission lines but apart from that they continued cutting the poles and then setting it on fire. So those are the two ways that these people have done damage to the transmission line structures."
And every time a structure like this is damaged it costs BEL $17,000. This expense has forced BEL to employ measures to protect the line meaning coordinated foot patrols by the Belize Defence Force soldiers as well as aerial surveillance from the BDF defender.
Dawn Sampson, Corporate Communications Manager - BEL
"The Belize Defense Force is carrying out both ground and air patrol and we upped the reward to $5,000 so hopefully this will all come to an end soon because it is really taking a heavy toll on us. The most critical issue is of course the inconvenience that our customers experience. Whenever these acts of sabotage occur, we have to order a power outage in order to repair it. And its also very costly too because what happens is that we are unable to purchase the cheapest energy at any given point in time. Emergency power from Mexico at the moment is costing us about 24 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour compared to the normal 6 cents that we are normally paying."
And now the company is appealing to the saboteurs.
Dawn Sampson,
"I'd really like to appeal to the person or persons out there carrying out these acts to really take this into consideration. Be considerate of our customers; its really hurting us."
Luciano Novelo,
"I would say that to whose doing this, that's not the way to do things and all of us need power whenever we reach home and for x reason and I think that they have to think twice before they commit this kind of barbarism."
So called barbarities that may make the image of these leaning power lines, however unsightly, something the company will have to live with.
BEL engineers say there have been 7 structures damaged on the transmission line from Xul-Ha to the Western Power Station and one structure damaged between Belmopan and San Ignacio. 2 more acts of sabotage occurred when wires were thrown across the 115 KV lines forcing them to ground out and short the system.
