Premier Alex Scott yesterday revealed that the battered Causeway - which links the East End with the rest of the Island - may eventually be completely rebuilt in a bid to make it more robust against severe weather.

He admitted that, in hindsight, the Causeway - where four people were swept to their deaths at the start of Hurricane Fabian on Friday - should have been closed to all traffic well before storm force winds whipped up.

And, he said, in future it would be.

"There are lessons to be learned," Mr. Scott said.

"The next time we have a significant hurricane warning, we will close the Causeway, so no one is out on that thoroughfare in danger in the future."

He added: "For instance, if we know a storm is going to hit at noon, we will close it at 10 a.m.

"When we get a storm of this size, for the duration of that day, it would have been closed.

"We would tell people within 72 hours so they can make arrangements well before the time of closure."

However, the Premier said the whole Causeway could be totally re-built to make it more secure in future.

"Parts of the Causeway that were worked on in the summer - they stayed, they survived," he said.

"It was the old portions that we lost, and still, considering it was a category three hurricane, not too many structures can withstand that."

He added: "The Causeway may be entirely replaced with a completely different structure in future, but we will make sure that the Causeway, as long as it is there, is as safe as possible.

"We will make every effort to never lose anyone there again."

Four people were lost on Friday after they became trapped on the Causeway at about 2.30 p.m.

The body of Con. Stephen Symons, who worked out of St. George's Police Station, was found on North Shore on Sunday afternoon. However, no trace has yet been found of his missing colleagues Con. Nicole O'Connor or civilian Police station duty officer Gladys Saunders. The body of lost Manuel Pacheco, a civilian who was travelling in a car behind the three Police workers, has also not yet been found.

They are all believed to have been washed into the sea.

Mr. Scott said Bermuda still had a long way to go to get completely back to normality, but said everyone, including Bermudians, expats, blacks and whites, had come together to do what they could to get the Island back and working again.

However, he said insurance companies had estimated that the damage costs would run to substantially more than for Hurricane Emily, which cost $60 million, and the tourism industry had been badly affected.

Some hotels have had to close for repairs and the cruise ships have been forced to stay away this week, but Mr. Scott hopes they will return in the next week or two.

But even then, due to problems with some of the docks, they may not be able to swap from one port on the Island to another, as has been customary in the past.

But Mr. Scott said, despite the damage to homes, roads, schools and the Island's other infrastructure caused by Hurricane Fabian, Government had not felt it necessary to accept the help offered from the British Government in the form of two British naval ships based in the Caribbean.

He said the Island was on top of the challenges it faced, and said the items the carriers had on board were not necessarily things that were required, such as blankets.

Yesterday, Government announced that key communication and power links were coming back online and it was hoped that schools would be back to normal by next Monday.

The Causeway is still restricted to single lane traffic during the day, but will remain closed at night until further notice.

Works and Engineering staff are working at night with the aim of providing two-lane traffic as quickly as possible.

The public is urged to be patient with the long waiting periods to use the bridge.