The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) said its power outage on Thursday only lasted about half-an-hour and could not have caused the massive flooding in the city.
Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green said on Thursday that both the Kitty and Liliendaal pump stations were affected by power outages and called for the GPL to provide a back-up power supply to enable the municipality to carry out drainage works.
Responding to this, GPL said in a press release: “the Demerara Interconnected System suffered a complete shutdown at 7.34 am during the heavy rains yesterday. Power was restored to the Kitty pump at 8.02 am and to the Liliendaal pump at 8.09 am.”
According to the release, the pumps were idle for half an hour which would have affected operations. The release suggested that the non-functioning of the pumps could not have caused the flooding. GPL said “did the power outage affect pumping operations, yes it did, did this idle time result in the flooding in Georgetown, the conclusion is obvious.”
In a statement, Green had said that the sole electrically-driven pump at Liliendaal could not function on Thursday because of a power outage. He said GPL should provide another power source to the Liliendaal Pump Station since power supply is critical to the unit in that area. Additionally, he said the hydro-flow pump was removed and taken to another location.
Green also explained that there was only one functioning electrically-driven pump at the Kitty station, but that it was also disabled as a result of the power outage.