Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Van­dals plunged hun­dreds of res­i­dents in Princes Town and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties in­to dark­ness on Fri­day night af­ter dam­ag­ing crit­i­cal Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) in­fra­struc­ture in the Fair­field Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment.

The at­tack left over 450 cus­tomers with­out elec­tric­i­ty for sev­er­al hours, with some re­main­ing with­out pow­er yes­ter­day, as emer­gency per­son­nel from T&TEC Dis­tri­b­u­tion South Area car­ried out re­pairs to sev­ered un­der­ground ca­bles con­nect­ed to a cir­cuit break­er car­ry­ing 12,000 volts of elec­tric­i­ty. Al­though the ca­bles had been cut, they were not stolen. In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the van­dals may have fled the scene be­fore com­plet­ing the theft, as a slip­per and oth­er items were re­port­ed­ly found near the in­fra­struc­ture.

In a state­ment, T&TEC said emer­gency per­son­nel had re­stored elec­tric­i­ty overnight, but about an hour lat­er, res­i­dents re­port­ed an­oth­er out­age. The com­pa­ny said the in­ter­rup­tion was traced to sev­ered un­der­ground ca­bles, prompt­ing crews to re­turn to the site to car­ry out fur­ther re­pairs. The com­pa­ny said pow­er was re­stored in phas­es through­out yes­ter­day, start­ing from 10 am and was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by mid­day.

T&TEC con­demned the act of van­dal­ism and warned that tam­per­ing with its in­fra­struc­ture pos­es a se­ri­ous risk of in­jury or elec­tro­cu­tion. “For your safe­ty, please stay away from over­head lines, sub­sta­tions and re­lat­ed equip­ment.” The util­i­ty al­so ap­pealed to any­one with in­for­ma­tion about acts of van­dal­ism to con­tact the com­pa­ny at 474-8467.

Ex­press­ing his dis­gust about the sit­u­a­tion, Fair­field res­i­dent Kel­ly Williams re­called that he was watch­ing the FI­FA World Cup foot­ball game when he heard a loud ex­plo­sion like a blown trans­former. “The whole place just gone dark just so, whole night. Well, I say it’s just a mi­nor prob­lem, not know­ing this morn­ing I come out and hear­ing like some­body was try­ing to thief cop­per.”

He com­plained, “At the end­ing of the day that’s fail­ure be­cause when they do that, and I sure is no­body from in­side here, when they come from on the out­side and they come and they do that, it come like they dis­tress­ing we and we are law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

Williams said he was wor­ried about his Koi and Gold­fish­es sur­viv­ing with­out the aquar­i­um pump, but for­tu­nate­ly, they did, and his ap­pli­ances re­mained in­tact.

He sug­gest­ed ad­di­tion­al street­lights in the area where the van­dal­ism oc­curred near See­bal­ack Av­enue and Pagee Road. An­oth­er res­i­dent, An­thon Layne, said he, too, was watch­ing the foot­ball match when the out­age oc­curred. Layne, who lives with his 90-year-old fa­ther, called for tougher mea­sures against cop­per theft.

“That is bad and I hope that these peo­ple who do­ing these things when they pick up with them, put them in­side and throw away the keys be­cause you can­not be in­con­ve­nienc­ing every­body be­cause you want to thief some wire to go and sell,” he said.

Mean­while, St Julien/Princes Town North coun­cil­lor Latch­mi Nar­ine Ramd­han said he was bom­bard­ed with calls from res­i­dents who were dis­ap­point­ed that they were un­able to see the World Cup game. While the dis­rup­tion was wide­spread, al­so af­fect­ing com­mu­ni­ties in St Julien, Matil­da, Buen In­ten­to and New Grant, he praised T&TEC for its prompt re­sponse. De­scrib­ing the acts of van­dal­ism at T&TEC fa­cil­i­ties as a “very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion,” he said, “I want to sug­gest that they should have some kind of con­trol mea­sure over that (over the sale of cop­per) as to who they buy it from, how they buy it, and that kind of thing... I think the Gov­ern­ment should try to con­trol that to some ex­tent. “

He said the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion has rec­om­mend­ed the in­stal­la­tion of cam­eras in an iso­lat­ed area not far from where the van­dal­ism oc­curred, not­ing that it has be­come an il­le­gal dump­ing site for garbage.

On June 10, an al­leged van­dal suf­fered se­vere burns af­ter com­ing in­to con­tact with a 132-kilo­volt break­er at the T&TEC Brechin Cas­tle Sub­sta­tion. The in­ci­dent trig­gered a mas­sive volt­age dip across Trinidad. The sus­pect fled but was sub­se­quent­ly ap­pre­hend­ed and tak­en for med­ical care.