–warns kite flyers to beware

OVER the Easter weekend, consumers within the Demerara Interconnected System (DIS) experienced a series of outages, including four total shutdowns.

The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) said in a statement Wednesday that there were in fact just three system shutdowns in the Demerara Interconnected System (DIS).

Those shutdowns,GPL said, occurred at 09:58hrs, 11:04hrs and 12:02hrs, and were due to technical problems experienced at the DP3 Kingston Power Station.

The team of engineers worked assiduously to rectify the problems, and the last affected community was repowered at 12:58hrs.

However, on April 22, 2014, at 04:45 hrs, a vehicle hit and broke a primary pole on Homestretch Avenue, Georgetown, resulting in a system shutdown in the DIS. GPL teams replaced the pole and hardware, and all affected communities were repowered by 05:46hrs.

GPL added that, as in previous years, there were numerous localized outages directly linked to kites being entangled in its networks. These avoidable occurrences cause the company to expend its resources, and result in great inconvenience to the nation at large, the statement said.

KITE-FLYING SAFETY
On Wednesday, a 20–year–old Sophia youth came into contact with a live wire while attempting to retrieve a kite in the Sophia area. He is currently nursing severe burns about his body at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
GPL says it empathizes with the family of the injured youth, and wishes him a speedy recovery.
The company has said that this incident speaks directly to the public disregarding precautionary warnings it had issued on television, radio and Online for this Easter season.
“It is with this recent occurrence that we warn the public to NEVER fly kites near power lines. This is the number one danger to which kite-flyers are exposed. If perhaps (the kite) becomes entangled in our network, NEVER try to recover it; as tugging the kite can affect the quality of electricity being supplied to nearby communities and result in loss of life and/or injuries,” the company’s press statement said.
The company is inviting interested parties to visit its website at www.gplinc.com for more safety tips.