A total of 74 households remained without power last night after Sunday's hit from Hurricane Igor but Belco has experienced an outpouring of support from customers.

Company spokeswoman Susan McGrath-Smith explained: "The security guard at Belco's reception desk called me this afternoon to come pick up what an unnamed woman left at the front desk. 'Woman from Pembroke' left a huge shopping bag full of bags of candy and boxes of cookies Godiva level stuff for everybody working on restoration.

"I took some of it to customer services, and gave the rest to the canteen to give to crews with the evening meal, as the woman dropped it off in the late afternoon. "

She added: "We are extremely grateful to 'woman from Pembroke' and to the many, many customers who have called, e-mailed and showed up in person there are others who came to the lobby — to say 'thank you' to everyone who keeps the power on and who are restoring power after the storm.

"Truly, expressions like this including the people who our crews meet while doing their work, who also give them water and coffee and who say thanks they really make everything move so much better and faster. The community keep us going."

At its worst, the blackout affected 28,700 homes across the Island.

Belco managed to get 234 customers back online during the course of yesterday, which began with a total of 330 customers in the dark. The worst-affected area of the Island is the central parishes, where there are 46 customers affected. There are 22 in the east and six in the west.

Ms McGrath-Smith said: "All multi-customer outages either have a crew on-site or are scheduled for this evening, so crews will then be working through the smallest jobs.

"As sections of the Island are restored, crews will be dispatched to the sections that still have outages. This weekend, crews will continue to start early and work late. Again, customers who still do not have power are asked to phone 955 to be sure their outages are recorded in Belco's outage management system. Customers may also be called by Belco to verify some outages.

"We are working to complete the remaining jobs as quickly as possible. Again, we thank the community, and especially those who remain without electricity, for their patience in the aftermath of Hurricane Igor."