During the passage of Hurricane Beryl, some 30% of energy consumers lost power due to compromised power lines. Owing to strong winds and fallen trees, LUCELEC is asking residents to keep their trees trimmed to avoid them falling on power lines.

Corporate Comms Officer, Carmy Joseph, notes while trees may hold sentimental value to owners, they pose a critical hazard, especially if they are overgrown.

“It has created a lot of problems when you have storms and weather systems in the past, and again what happened on Monday. You have a situation where if you have a tree - and I know you love your tree, you groomed your tree, you love your mangoes, you love your breadfruit, you don't want to cut your tree,” she explained.

According to her, LUCELEC has a programme where the company trims overhanging trees and compensates the owners. However, even with such an initiative, tree owners are often reluctant to have the trees trimmed.

“LUCELEC is asking to trim trees because the lines are threatened by them, and we do actually compensate customers when we do cut the tree or the branches, but a lot of customers have a very difficult time letting go of their tree.”

Joseph notes that it only takes one fallen tree to disrupt the electricity connection for an entire community.

“We understand it's a very personal thing but when you do not trim the tree it means that when the wind is blowing these things fall on the lines and they take the whole system down and the entire community is without power because of it,” she said.

Despite efforts to restore power to affected communities, unstable overhanging trees impeded LUCELEC’s work immensely in the hours following the passage of the weather system.

Under the laws of Saint Lucia, particularly the Works and Roads Act: Cap 8.05 and the Land Registration Act: Cap 5.01, landowners are solely responsible for damages caused by falling fruit or overhanging branches from encroaching trees.