Christ­mas will be mer­ry for vil­lagers along the North Coast as elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter re­turned to the ar­eas which were left in the dark for over four days by a pow­er out­age.

The ar­eas af­fect­ed were the vil­lages of Mara­cas, Las Cuevas, La Fil­lette and Blan­chisseuse.

The vil­lagers, who are part of some 250 house­holds, were up­set on Tues­day af­ter re­main­ing with­out elec­tric­i­ty for days and to add to their woes, many of them could on­ly watch as their Christ­mas food sup­plies, in par­tic­u­lar their fes­tive meats all spoiled.

But as promised by the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Mar­vin Gon­za­les elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter re­turned to the com­mu­ni­ties on Wednes­day night.

On Christ­mas Eve, many res­i­dents were busy mak­ing last-minute prepa­ra­tions for the hol­i­days and were elat­ed to have both elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter in the ar­eas.

One vil­lager told us that she is hap­py that she can now cel­e­brate the hol­i­days with her fam­i­ly. She added that while she did suf­fer loss­es, she will not pur­sue com­pen­sa­tion from the au­thor­i­ties since what she lost was “not that much.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who is a shop keep­er told Guardian Me­dia that he too is hap­py for the re­turn of pow­er and wa­ter.

He said al­though there was no elec­tric­i­ty he was able to sal­vage his Christ­mas meats and yes­ter­day he be­gan to thaw them out as his hol­i­day cook­ing got un­der­way.

He said some oth­er shop own­ers were not that as lucky and had to dump their stock.

How­ev­er, the shop keep­er said they are all just grate­ful to con­tin­ue life and en­joy the hol­i­days with the fam­i­ly.

On Thurs­day few T&TEC crews were in the ar­eas since pow­er was re­stored to all homes but Guardian Me­dia was told crews will be con­tin­u­ing main­te­nance work in the ar­eas.

In ad­di­tion, all the mo­bile sub­sta­tions which were sup­ply­ing lim­it­ed pow­er to the vil­lagers were all placed on the Mara­cas Bay to be re­lo­cat­ed.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion TTEC con­firmed that on Sun­day 20 De­cem­ber, at around 10 am, a large tree in the forest­ed area be­tween San­ta Cruz and North Coast Road, Mara­cas, came crash­ing down caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to its in­fra­struc­ture.

This re­sult­ed in a ma­jor dis­rup­tion in the elec­tri­cal sup­ply to res­i­dents along the North Coast of the coun­try.

Min­is­ter Gon­za­les and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St Ann’s East, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly both apol­o­gised to res­i­dents af­fect­ed and as­sured com­pen­sa­tion where nec­es­sary.