Belize City Suffers Longest Power Outage in Years!

Belize City is back online tonight after a marathon twelve-hour blackout that started just after midnight. For residents, it was a tough throwback to life without electricity, no lights, no fans, and plenty of frustration. Belize Electricity Limited says the outage was triggered by a transmission line fault near the West Lake Substation at Mile Eight on the George Price Highway. The entire city went dark, but by 2:30 a.m., some neighborhoods like Belama, Bella Vista, and Buttonwood Bay were reconnected through the Ladyville grid. For everyone else, power didn’t return until just after noon. That long wait disrupted school and work routines, hit small businesses hard, and even delayed the city’s E-bus service. We caught up with vendors today to hear how they managed during those hours in the dark.

 

Elaine Ortiz, Food Vendor

“My concern is minor. It’s just my meat that I left in the refridge. I would like the electricity to come on. Don’t take too long so that doesn’t spoil.”

 

Paul Lopez

“It would be a lost for you right?”

 

Elaine Ortiz

“Definitely it would be a loss but we can depend on BEL.” 

 

Juice Vendor

“I need the freezers to work so without freezer I can’t have the juice them continuously being cold. It is cold at least for now, for a temporary coldness that the refrigerators have. But from that, otherwise It’s just a temporary thing.”

 

Paul Lopez

“You put ice in your drinks?”

 

Juice Vendor

“I put ice that’s what practically keeping me up right now. If I didn’t put no ice, sometimes people want ice and they want really cold drinks, but they can’t get cold drinks if they don’t have ice.”

 

Ainsley Castro, Chef

“The only lee effect da mi juice and thing cause ah du wa nice lee natural juice to, you know. See this pregnant lady ya name miss Rose have to gone buy juice somewhere else seka ah neva ready fi ah. Ihn oh com patronize mi ya because ah noh have cold juice.”