around-the-clock effort by Bermuda Electric Light Company crews to restore lines brought down by Hurricane Gert.

The majority of the 12,000 households which suffered power outages were reconnected while the hurricane still raged on Tuesday.

But a Belco spokeswoman confirmed that by yesterday morning some 450 customers were still without power.

And by last night, with the restoration effort considerably slowed, the spokeswoman confirmed that there was still the odd pocket of homes that were struggling without electricity.

"Belco has made significant progress in restoring power to the Island after Hurricane Gert moved away from the Island yesterday,'' said spokeswoman Robin McPhee last night.

"Soon after all main line circuits were restored by 7 p.m. on Tuesday we were able to determine that approximately 900 customers were still without power.

Between 7 p.m. and midnight, when our crews were stood down, we had restored power to 450 of those customers.

"At 7 a.m. this morning, with 450 customers still out of power, our restoration crews began systematically working on the largest areas still out of power as their immediate priority, followed by the smaller clusters.

"The pace of our restoration effort slowed considerably today as there were a significant number of areas, many of which involve less than six customers, all across Bermuda still without power.

"Once main line circuits had been restored, our restoration plan was to identify branch lines with the most customers and restore power there first.

"By 5 p.m. we had all branch lines back up and we are currently working to restore power to areas where there are isolated faults, for example downed low voltage lines, as well as individual customers.

"Nevertheless our crews will be working through midnight and we are making every effort to restore power to all customers by midnight tonight.'' Ms McPhee added that a small number of people who arrived home from work last night also reported their power was still out.

"She swerved into the driveway of the Matilda Smith home.'' The driver had three passengers in her car at the time of the incident and Mr.

Russell said if she had not been alert "definitely those four people in that car would not have been here now.'' The 14-year-old bus showed no signs of a brake problem when Mr. Russell began his shift at 2.05 yesterday afternoon. He said that he collected CedarBridge students at 3.45 and set off for Somerset down Gymnasium Road without any problem.

"I don't know what went wrong, the bus had been fine up until then,'' he said "All I know is when I pushed down on the brake nothing was there.'' Mr. Russell brought the bus to a halt by deliberately crashing into the wall of the East End Asphalt Company.

According to Mr. Russell there were no injuries in the hair-raising accident, and no damage to the vehicles or the wall.

Director of Public Transport, Herman Basden, could not be reached for comment last night.