One year ago on January second, we started the news with the report of five murders on New Year's Day.  Tonight, we're very happy to report that the first newscast of 2020 - has no murder stories - not one.  

We start, instead, with the story of New Year's frustration on Caye Caulker - where  a large potion of the island community started out 2020 in a blackout. 

Now, this is after, in our New Years' Eve newscast, when the power company promised reliable services for at least the New Year's Day holiday itself. 

A promise broken - and, it couldn't have come at a worse time - the peak of the tourism season.  

These power and water failures going back to Christmas Eve have caused a crisis in the tourism industry on the island, and residents are up in arms about it. They planned an impromptu public demonstration for this afternoon, but their thunder may have been stolen somewhat by a public meeting that BEL organized on short notice. Instead of interfacing with their customers through press releases and interviews with the media, BEL's management went out there to speak with the residents face to face.

Our News team was on the island for that 65-minute session, and Daniel Ortiz reports:

At around midday today, senior members of BEL 's management faced the angry community of Caye Caulker at the village community center.

They were there to offer an olive branch in the form of full transparency. They came with many answers about what went wrong over the Christmas and New Year's Holidays, and what they intend to do in both the short and medium-term to ensure that these costly power outages become a thing of the past.

But, perhaps the recent interactions with angry and dissatisfied guests, who were demanding full refunds, were fresh on the minds of hoteliers and restaurant owners. So, in certain instances, this community meeting turned into opportunities for residents to openly vent their frustration at the electricity company for the recent power failures on the island.

Caye Caulker Resident 1
"For the past week we have not had steady power, it was our for what 16, 18 hours. Any food that was in those refrigerators are absolute garbage and needs to be thrown out. Restaurants are going through the exact same thing, 4 thousand dollar stocks thrown away because the power has just been off. Power bills have gone up substantially, 20-25 percent in the last year. At my restaurants specifically, it went up from 650 dollars to 1000 dollars a month. So our bills are going up, our loses are mounting and it seems like you guys are putting a band aid on something that needed to be fixed a long time ago. The customer satisfaction on this island right now, is 0, it 's absolutely 0. We as the Caye Caulker business association we sent out a questionnaire, we did it quickly last night because we heard you guys were going to be doing this meeting. Just 16 businesses out of the 650 that are here, had losses of 55 thousand dollars Belize. That 's just 16 of them."

Caye Caulker Resident 2
"How will you compensate, will you lower our rates? Will you give us a forgiveness their on our electric bill for this month? What will happen? We lost out big time, what will you do to help compensate for our loss?"

Maria Vega - Chair, BTIA Caye Caulker
"I don 't know if you understand how this business is built up for decades. It is heart breaking, each and every investor, developer and worker in this industry, we defer our special occasions, we defer Christmas, we defer Easter, we defer every special holiday, everybody else enjoys so that we can float this economy."

Caye Caulker Resident 3
"For every large business that lost a lot of revenue and expenses, you have 50 small businesses where those families are planning to pay their school fees, were planning to pay their loans, bills because we have months or months of slow season. The two highest moments in the year have now been devastating. The first one as you described, we could have some compassion, even though it was difficult, but when it happens a second time and again, I know you 're just the faces representing a large company but what we feel, is negligence, what we feel that in your heart we believe the 5 of you sitting there understand there needs to have 5 working units coming into the season and when people are saying BEL is lying, part of it is lack of information and lack of transparency."

Dawn Nunez - General Manager, Employee & Corporate Services, BEL
"We all agree, you are on point with a good bit with that you have said in terms of the crisis situation, difficulties you all have been facing and indeed when it comes to communication, like the point that was made earlier. We do need to make sure that we are continuously communicating, sometimes we take it for granted."

Hotelier
"Every hotel is scared to death with what we dealt with yesterday. I started my morning 41 rooms, 32 people asked for refunds and wanted to leave."

Now that BEL had heard first-hand accounts of the hardships caused by their generations failures, the residents did allow them an opportunity to explain why the community had to suffer for many hours without electricity on New Year's Day.

Mario Vellos - Superintendent, Operations Maintenance Generation
"The power went off 3:30 in the morning, we had fire, one of the units caught on fire, the turbo and that 's when we started with the issues. We brought up back another unit we had and about 6:30 in the morning we called and told that unit was smoking excessively and it had some mechanical issues. I told them we need to take it off to protect the unit rather than run it like that and lose it, we need to take it off and address the problem and that 's when the whole situation started for the new year, at 3:30 in the about."

BEL has a temporary fix for the problem. They want to repair the failing diesel generation unit, retrieve a second that 's in-country, and acquire an upgrade that should arrive within 3 to 4 weeks. These will act as backups to the 3 units that are currently supplying the island.

Sean Fuller - General Manager, Commercial & Retail Services
"What we 've done, over the last week was order the brand new machine for the island. That should be here between 2 to 3 weeks. They 're telling us 2 to 3 weeks but we want to say within 3 to 4 weeks. We want to make sure when it gets here, it 's been transported out and we get it out here. Between now and then, we have to keep our fingers crossed that these 3 units will continue to be operating as best as possible. We have a private company on the island this morning trying to get that number 4 unit shipped down to determine if we can get a quick solution to that unit instead of having to wait another few months and then there is another 5th unit that is in the Independence area in the country that we 're trying to mobilize to get on the island as quickly as possible to give us an additional comfort that in the event we lose one of the 3 units that are operating right now, we 'll have that back up. So we totally understand the frustration, we know that the backup plan that we had, has failed us and it has failed us miserably."

"We 're totally frustrated with the situation, not as much as you guys are, we totally understand the frustration. So, we 're thinking right now, the plan is and the plan is in operation now. The 3 units that are operating will have an additional 3 units on the island to ensure that if we lose any one of the 3 currently operating units, we will have not only one back up, not only two back up, but as much as three back up to those units in the event we have a failure."

There is also a permanent solution in the works as well. BEL wants to connect Caye Caulker to the national grid for more reliable service. That will take 12 to 15 months to implement.

In order to ensure that BEL's island facility can supply customers with continuous electricity access, they are pleading with residents, and business owners to conserve as much power as possible.

A late evening, press release says, quote, " The Company reminds customers to practice energy conservation, in particular curtailing the use of air conditioners, to ensure that power supply can be maintained for all customers on the island particularly during the peak hours [of] 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., [and] 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m." End quote.

They have committed to providing regular updates, and they plan to hold a follow-up meeting with key stakeholders next week.