A weeks-long downtown power outage in Nassau has triggered an unprecedented disruption to the Bahamas’ judicial system, forcing the Supreme Court to shut its doors entirely and drawing sharp criticism from the country’s top legal body over persistent infrastructure failures and poor public communication.
What began as a localized power interruption on Friday afternoon rapidly escalated into a full-blown crisis for the judiciary. According to a senior court official, Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) provided no advance or ongoing updates about the outage after power cut out around 4pm Friday. Left with no information about when service would resume, court administrators opted to keep the facility’s backup generators running nonstop through the weekend, assuming the issue would be resolved quickly. By Monday morning, the generators had completely exhausted their fuel supply.
After officials paid out of pocket for emergency refueling—an unbudgeted expense not accounted for in the judiciary’s annual operating plan—one of the court’s primary generator units suffered permanent damage to its seals from the continuous operation. The unit repeatedly failed on Monday, forcing court administrators to order a full shutdown of the Supreme Court while technicians waited for the system to cool to complete repairs.
The closure has upended a tightly scheduled judicial calendar, where most hearing dates are locked in six to 12 months in advance. For the Bahamas Bar Association, the disruption amounts to a direct attack on citizens’ constitutional rights to timely justice. In a scathing statement, the association condemned both BPL and relevant government authorities for their failure to maintain consistent communication with the judiciary throughout the outage.
“When the doors of the Courts cannot open, the rights of citizens to be heard, to have their liberty preserved or vindicated, and to have their disputes resolved in a timely manner are placed in jeopardy,” the association said, adding that the lack of advance warning left the judiciary unable to put contingency plans in place, leaving litigants, witnesses, and legal professionals stranded without information. “This is unacceptable.”
Attorney General Wayne Munroe acknowledged that any loss of court time poses a significant concern for the justice system, though he noted that backup generators are not designed to operate 24 hours a day continuously. “Anything that causes loss of any court time clearly is something that is not useful,” he said.
The outage’s ripple effects extended far beyond the Supreme Court. The nearby Industrial Tribunal also lost power on Monday, with a senior official confirming that the outage brought all proceedings to a halt. Without electricity, the tribunal could not operate its computers, cooling systems, or even running water. The official added that the facility has struggled with longstanding infrastructure issues, including an elevator that has been out of service for months, persistent mould growth, and extreme overheating during summer months. Despite these challenges, the official stressed that the tribunal has no backlog of cases and has stayed ahead of its scheduling.
Downtown businesses have also absorbed thousands of dollars in unexpected costs to stay operational. Allen Williams, manager of the popular downtown eatery Cafe Matisse, told reporters that his establishment has kept its generator running nonstop since Friday afternoon to preserve thousands of dollars worth of perishable food inventory. He estimated the business has already spent around $1,000 on extra fuel, and like court officials, he received no direct updates from BPL about the outage or restoration timeline. “Long as they down, we burning fuel,” Williams said. “Very expensive.”
In a statement released Monday, BPL blamed the Bank Lane area outage on a cable fault near Rawson Square that was identified by Bahamas Grid Company (BGC) technicians around 2:30am Tuesday. The utility said crews from BPL and BGC were working together to complete repairs and expected power to be fully restored by 1am Wednesday. However, the statement did not address the loss of power reported by multiple downtown stakeholders that began as early as Friday afternoon.
The outage is the latest in a string of high-profile failures for BPL that have rocked the Bahamas this summer. Less than two weeks ago, a transformer explosion at Blue Hills triggered a seven-hour-long island-wide blackout across New Providence, affecting most residents on the island. Just days later, western New Providence communities endured five consecutive days of rolling outages, forcing some residents to sleep in their cars for cool air, throw out entire refrigerators full of spoiled food, and spend hundreds of dollars on generator fuel. Outages have continued in recent days and spread to some of the country’s Family Islands as well.
BPL has attributed the recent spate of outages to a combination of factors, including physical cable faults, overloaded transformers, tripped feeders and breakers, damaged power lines, small infrastructure fires, and unusually high summer energy demand that has pushed the grid beyond its designed capacity. Last week, BPL Chief Operating Officer Anthony Christie acknowledged that the country’s power grid is under severe strain, with many key circuits and transformers operating at or near maximum capacity.
In a separate clarification, Police Commissioner Shanta Knowles noted that the ongoing closure of sections of Central Police Station is unrelated to the power outage, and is instead the result of planned extensive renovations. Members of the public seeking to file police reports during the renovations are directed to use facilities at the Tourism Police Unit on Parliament Street and the downtown wharf.