branches coming down on power lines.

And a frustrated customer complained that power cuts occurred "too often''.

His complaints came after Woodlands Road, Langton Hill, Euclid Avenue and part of St. John's Road lost electricity for more than an hour.

Asked if she could shed some light on the subject, Bermuda Electric Light Company spokeswoman Robin McPhee explained: "The power cut was caused by some fairly high winds which blew some tree branches onto some lines on Langton Hill. It began at about 8 p.m. and we had crews working on the problem as soon as possible.'' The Woodlands Road resident, who asked not to be named, said this was the second power cut in his area in a week, the first one happening on Saturday.

"Every time somebody sneezes around here the lights seem to go out,'' he complained. "It's annoying because it always seems to happen at around this time, either in the early morning or at night, when people are home.'' He added: "What makes it even more annoying is that when you try to get through to Belco to complain, you just a get an automatic machine telling you to call back later.'' He also pointed out that the "frustration'' was doubled by the fact that his home was "right next door'' to Belco's power plant.

Ms McPhee responded: "I can fully appreciate the concerns of residents, especially when they are so close to Belco. It must be difficult to understand why their power can't just come back on immediately.

"However, I would stress that we do our very best to make sure that trees are trimmed as much as possible and that, when power cuts do happen, they are dealt with as quickly as possible..'' Asked what options were being looked at to bring the frequency of such outages down, Ms McPhee said: "We are looking at several options right now.

Unfortunately, it would just not be economically viable to look at putting all of Bermuda's power lines underground. Such a task would be phenomenally expensive.''