A fault in an underground transmission cable at the Bermuda Electric Light Company (Belco) plant yesterday is related to the devastating fire on July 14 which plunged the Island into darkness.

And weaknesses in the system caused by the fire mean that failures could happen again. As a result of the fault, three engines inside the plant failed to operate affecting 2,000 homes and businesses throughout the Island yesterday afternoon. The City of Hamilton was not affected by the power outage. It took 40 minutes to get the engines running again, she said, and all customers were back online at 3.25 p.m.

"They have isolated the cable that the fault was on and are still trying to determine the cause but it could very well be some residual damage as a result of the fire on July 14," Belco spokeswoman Linda Smith said yesterday. "The fire would have had a great impact on the entire system. There may be places where there are weaknesses where there were none before."

She said the fault occurred in an underground transmission cable that runs from the Serpentine Road plant to the Belmont substation.

When the fault took place at 2 p.m. it caused a "dip" in the voltage which caused lighting to turn off momentarily. "In some cases some sensitive equipment may have shut down but for the most part, the lights and most equipment could have come back up," she said.

ATM machines at the Bank of Bermuda were also affected.

"They shut off but came back on again," bank spokesperson Arnell Smith-Klein said. She said the machines were only out of service for a brief moment.

The bank had no reports of ATM cards being lost by the shutdown and money would not be lost as transactions carried out before the shutdown would automatically have been cancelled.

Butterfield Bank was not affected by the surge, said spokeswoman Anna Lowry. She said the bank had back-up systems and generators to come up with any kind of power failure.

King Edward VII Memorial Hospital was affected by the power surge, but spokeswoman Ana-Maria Critchley said emergency generators immediately kicked in just as they did during the blackout.

Business at ACE Ltd. was momentarily interrupted by the fault, however within three seconds an emergency generator kicked in.

Government's Department of Communication and Information said most Government department's "did not even notice" the fault as it took place during the lunch hour.