Residents in 500 homes in the North Shore Road, Pembroke area were left shivering on Saturday morning when a pole fire caused an outage.

But the problem was fixed by the time temperatures dipped to 49.6 degrees later that evening ? a record low for that date. Friday had also been a record low for that date with the mercury slumping to 47.8.

However, it was a long way short of Bermuda?s record low of 44 degrees recorded in the 1950s.

A Bermuda Electric Light Company spokeswoman said power blew just before 7 a.m. and was back on just before 1 p.m. ?The reason it took so long was because we had to replace the pole and transfer the equipment. ?We are sorry this happened but it was one of those things, it cannot be helped.?

However, one resident told his power wasn?t back until mid afternoon.

?Everyone was bundled up. I used an extra comforter to keep warm.?

She said there were also sporadic outages caused by overload as everyone cranked up the heating which sent the Island?s total usage to 104 megawatts. ?Anything over 100 megawatts is high.?