Offers of cash from grateful customers was just one of the ways in which homeowners with electricity tried to thank Belco staff after Hurricane Fabian.

Of course the money was turned down, although cups of tea and food were accepted by workers as they blitzed around the Island trying to get all the lights turned back on.

?When you saw the silhouette of kids running around in houses where the power had just come back on, it made all the hard work worthwhile,? said Ian Finnerty, a 33-year-old energy delivery foreman with the Bermuda Electric Light Company.

?We just got on with it at the time, but when you look back it was a massive accomplishment. Everyone was working round-the-clock to get power back to as many homes as we could as quickly as possible.?

He admitted that he had just one bad experience with the public during the Fabian clean-up, a woman came out of her power-less home and screamed at him, something he describes as ?a slap in the face? after all the work he had already done, and was still to do.

But other than that the response was all positive, something that a notice board covered in cards and letters of praise in the reception area of Belco?s headquarters stands testament to. Mr. Finnerty, who has been with the company for 15 years, was one of many employees who worked 18 hours a day for the best part of three weeks after Fabian struck the Island, ripped down power lines and left many homes without electricity.

?I think people?s families really suffered in those weeks after the hurricane,? he continued.

?I didn?t see my six year old for the whole time and I know there were a few guys working to restore power on one part of the Island while their own homes on another part of the Island were still without power.

?A lot of people thanked us while we were out there in the field, but our families also deserve thanks.?

As well as his post-hurricane duties, Mr. Finnerty also led a team during a difficult, and at times dangerous, during-Fabian task.

On call throughout Friday, September 5, he was one of many listening to the radio when the emergency broadcast was cut off.

Having just helped to ensure power would remain on at St. Brendan?s Hospital, his immediate priority became helping out at the Emergency Measures Organisation to get the Island?s broadcast lifeline back on air.

Salt spray in the air filter is thought to be the cause of the damaged generator which meant the broadcast tower at Prospect Place was bereft of power.

So with no generator, Mr. Finnerty and his crew attempted to re-attach power lines that had been torn away from their transformers by the downed trees.

Using the lights of their trucks, the crew temporarily managed to get the system back online despite the high winds and up came the broadcast.

But heavy gusts and further upheaval of branches meant power was lost again around midnight and 23-year-old electrical fitter Justin DeCouto went out with colleague Peter King in a JCB to cut a swathe through the trees and get back up to EMO headquarters to restore power. ?It was all pretty hairy and it was blowing about a lot still,? said Mr. DeCouto.

?We went out on the shooting range up there and scaled a ladder at got the power back up. The hardest thing was just getting up there in the first place on the roads. It looked like every tree in the world had come down.?

But halfway through his 32-hour shift, again power was restored.

Like so many of his colleagues he didn?t finish work until 8 p.m. that Saturday and, even then, this was only the beginning of 100 hours a week which even now are only dropping back to 60.