THE operators of the troubled Sandals Whitehouse Hotel in Westmoreland have expressed fears of a complete blackout, and severe discomfort to guests, because of faulty power cabling when the resort was being built.

“It is clearly the worst damage to installed cables that I have seen in 40 years of exposure to industrial/ commercial electrical distribution systems,” an international consultant commented at the end of a five-day audit of the hotel’s main distribution centre last month.

Sandals Whitehouse has been at the centre of a controversy pitting its project managers, the state-run Urban Development Corporation (UDC), then led by Dr Vin Lawrence, against the hotel’s operators, the Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart-owned Sandals Resorts International, which has sued over alleged poor and delayed finishing.

The hotel is jointly owned by the UDC, Gorstew representing Sandals and the state-owned National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ), through a company called ANDCO.

Stewart had originally dreamt of a hotel that would drive development along Jamaica’s rustic and scenic south coast, by generating jobs and fuelling the economy of the largely virginal stretch of picturesque communities.

The controversy has centred on cost overruns of US$43 million, but the faulty cabling is being discovered for the first time, leading to fears that a complete power cut could occur “any day now”.

“That would mean that we would be without power to operate the resort and not even generators could help, because those cables are also affected,” said an angry general manager, Jeremy Jones.

Contacted by the Sunday Observer, Jones said the submerged cabling continued to show “the poor quality of the work that was put into the construction of the hotel, and which we now have to remedy, for the comfort of our guests”.

He said the cables were clearly not designed to be submerged and the entire system would have to be re-cabled at a cost of millions of dollars.

“This is a disaster waiting to happen. If this happens, as it could any day now, we would be up the creek without a paddle,” said Jones.

The audit, or Electrical Megger Tests, were carried out between June 11 and June 16, 2008, to determine if there was evidence of physical damage to the cables that might have occurred during cable installation, following observation that the cables were submerged in water in the Main Power Distribution Centre as well as in the manholes.

United States-based consultants, O’Neil Technical Consultants of Columbia, South Carolina conducted the audit, using what it said was a Megger Test Set Model MIT 520 5kV Insulation Tester. This involved applying a 1,000 volt stress for 10 minutes between each phase conductor and the neutral “to determine Insulation Resistance (IR) and Polarisation Index (PI) for each cable”.

“After seeing the condition of the cables in the Main Power Distribution Centre, as well as those found in the manholes surveyed, it is clearly the worst damage to installed cables that I have seen in the 40-year exposure to industrial/commercial electrical distribution systems,” said lead consultant Frank O’Neil.

“Several instances of damaged cables in the panels were observed. Some of the damage appears to be through the jacket in into the insulation. This condition would be exacerbated by moisture and therefore a damaged location would become the most likely cable failure location,” said O’Neil in his report, a copy of which was obtained by the Sunday Observer.

“The cables were pulled using a tractor according to local employees, which is unheard of for industrial or commercial installations,” he noted.

The report said several electrical panels were incorrectly labelled. “For example, breakers to the fire pump, water storage, and Italian Village 3&4 did not control the indicated circuits. The implications to hotel operation are obvious, but the potential for personnel injury can be even more severe.”

It said that in some cases, installations were not in manholes as required by Jamaican Standard 21 and “it is probable that mechanical connectors were used for splices where the best approach would be compression connectors”.

The report disclosed: “One circuit was found with a colour change in mid-circuit. The end of the yellow conductor at the Main Distribution Centre was tested and found to be a red-jacketed conductor at the load end.”

Among its recommendations, the audit said there was need for replacement of all circuits, except for the chiller circuits, which serve the air conditioners, because they had been in a dry condition since installation, except for short-term flooding.

It said that after cable replacement, there should be a complete Property Electrical Plan, “possibly based on an overhead photo survey (Google Earth) showing the physical distribution of the cables.