Prime Minister Perry Christie yesterday said he is still puzzled as to why there was an island-wide blackout last Thursday that essentially brought New Providence to a standstill and promised to get to the bottom of what went wrong at The Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC).

“I’m still puzzled as to how you could have an island-wide failure and that no [two] systems are supposed to fail at exactly the same time,” Mr. Christie said. “The confluence of the events just puzzles me as to how it happened and it’s something that we’re looking into.”

Mr. Christie’s comments came on the heels of an announcement by BEC Chairman Leslie Miller assuring that measures are being put in place at the corporation to prevent future massive blackouts.

“This was a situation that no one really anticipated or expected,” Mr. Miller said. “It should not have happened. Why did it happen, and why did it not isolate itself? It should have stayed at a half mile radius from the substation in Baillou Hill.

“It should have been contained in that area instead of tripping the whole system. This is what we are going to ascertain and put in the necessary apparatus to ensure it does not happen again.”

Further, Mr. Miller has explained that preliminary investigations reveal that the situation appears to have been initiated at a substation at Soldier Road and when that substation detected a problem it went out.

The power, the chairman said, was then transferred to the Baillou Hill Power Station and the computers then told the system there was an overload, so it shut down the machine at Baillou Hill, through which a power surge was detected at Clifton.

Mr. Miller also said the corporation will have to determine a compensation package for all those affected customers.