The trans­port bridge link­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go broke down last Sat­ur­day due to a pow­er fail­ure which halt­ed the ar­rival of the in­ter-is­land fer­ry and air­craft, To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin con­firmed yes­ter­day. "The bridge be­tween the two is­lands was well and tru­ly sev­ered be­cause the T&T Ex­press fer­ry which ar­rived on Sat­ur­day night could not dock and dis­charge its pas­sen­ger and car­go loads, and the planes could not land at Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al air­port," Al­leyne-Top­pin said. Al­leyne-Top­pin (al­so To­ba­go East MP) ex­plained that the pow­er out­age which oc­curred in To­ba­go af­fect­ed the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply to the Scar­bor­ough port.

As a re­sult of lack of elec­tric­i­ty on the port, she said the land­ing ramp for the in­ter-is­land fer­ry–which ar­rived around 6.30 pm– could not be low­ered. The ramp op­er­ates via ship-to-shore elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply from the port. Al­leyne-Top­pin said elec­tric­i­ty to the port was down when the ves­sel be­gan to dock. Port of­fi­cials said they tried get­ting pas­sen­gers off through a "port­hole arrange­ment" to the pier be­neath. But this was can­celled in favour of us­ing a pedes­tri­an ramp which the ves­sel car­ries. How­ev­er, pas­sen­gers with ve­hi­cles had to re­main on the boat un­til around 8.15 pm when elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply kicked in, she added. Al­leyne-Top­pin said the port's gen­er­a­tor was not in­stalled. She con­tin­ued to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day since she said there was a cruise ship in port.

Where the Crown Point Air­port was con­cerned, Al­leyne-Top­pin said the elec­tric­i­ty out­age halt­ed the land­ing of air­craft since the run­way lights could not come on. She said the air­port was closed from 6.05 pm and re­opened around 6.45 pm op­er­at­ing on emer­gency light. But al­though the air­port's emer­gency so­lar-pow­ered sys­tem came in­to ac­tion, it could not fa­cil­i­tate get­ting all the run­way lights to come on, she added. Not­ing that the run­way's cir­cu­lar field lights need to be re­paired, Al­leyne-Top­pin said: "On Sat­ur­day, the lights went down on the south­ern side and on­ly edge lights from the be­gin­ning of the run­way were able to work, up to 4,500 feet and then, every oth­er light was work­ing." When the out­age oc­curred, a CA Dash-8 which was on the ground ready for take-off, de­part­ed for Trinidad.

How­ev­er, CA's flight 1554 which was due to leave Trinidad for To­ba­go, re­mained in Trinidad, she added. No in­ter­na­tion­al flights were sched­uled to ar­rive in To­ba­go on Sat­ur­day. Al­leyne-Top­pin said work was be­ing done on the run­way lights up to yes­ter­day to en­sure they worked since CA's in­au­gur­al flight from To­ba­go to New York was due to ar­rive at Crown Point last night. Al­leyne-Top­pin said fel­low To­ba­go MP Dr Del­mond Bak­er was among those af­fect­ed on Sat­ur­day since he was wait­ing at Pi­ar­co on a flight to To­ba­go. "We've been hav­ing many more pow­er out­ages since the con­struc­tion of the Cove in­dus­tri­al project," she said.

Al­leyne-Top­pin said last Sat­ur­day's sit­u­a­tion had grave im­pli­ca­tions for To­ba­go. "It is crit­i­cal that we have an ef­fi­cient light­ing sys­tem at the air­port since this has im­pli­ca­tions for con­ven­tions such as meet­ing FAA reg­u­la­tions. "To­ba­go is a tourism econ­o­my so when planes have to turn back it af­fects our mar­ket where book­ings, ground trans­port arrange­ments and oth­er af­fil­i­at­ed mat­ters are con­cerned in a domi­no ef­fect. "We need to en­sure free flow­ing sys­tems are in place since we have pa­tients com­ing to Trinidad by air. "Our port gen­er­a­tors must al­so have an au­to­mat­ic switch-over pow­er sys­tem when emer­gen­cies arise."

Warn­er re­sponds

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day that he had tried to pre­vent emer­gency sit­u­a­tions like last Sat­ur­day's episode at Crowne Point Air­port when he had award­ed the con­tract for run­way lights. Warn­er had come un­der flack a few months ago for award­ing the con­tract to fix the Crowne Point Air­port light­ing sys­tem in the ab­sence of an Air­port Au­thor­i­ty Board. He was lat­er in­struct­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to pull back the award and did so. Com­ment­ing on last Sat­ur­day's sit­u­a­tion with the air­port lights, Warn­er said yes­ter­day: "I tried my best to avert such a sit­u­a­tion like what hap­pened on Sat­ur­day, but I was not giv­en the sup­port I had ex­pect­ed. "But I will con­tin­ue to try to make the ef­forts to per­form to the best of my abil­i­ty un­til such time as oth­er­wise ob­tains," he added. Warn­er said he was mon­i­tor­ing the To­ba­go is­sues where his min­istry was con­cerned.