Lightning took out power to Gibbs Hill Lighthouse and hundreds of homes while messing up the Fairmont Southampton Hotel's phone service on Saturday.

The electrical storm passed over Bermuda in the early afternoon with two lighting strikes taking out switches in Flatts denying power to up to 300 homes for around 40 minutes.

And four lightning strikes on transformers in Southampton took out power for 60 homes and blew a fuse at the lighthouse.

Belco spokeswoman Susan McGrath-Smith said power went down at about 2.30 p.m. for homes in Admiralty Lane, Seymour Farm Road, Old South Road, Lighthouse Hill, St. Anne's Road and Middle Road.

Most had power restored by early evening while a particular damaging strike on a transformer led to power being out for homes in Newport Gardens until around 10.30 p.m.

Ms McGrath-Smith said: "It took a big lightning hit and had to be replaced. It was a big job."

But she said the emergency had not distracted Belco from its efforts in rectifying problems caused by the massive fire two weeks ago as different specialists were involved.

Harbour Radio said it had sent staff to help fix the lighthouse after a suspected lightning strike knocked out its power.

An emergency generator was pressed into action at the lighthouse and the radar had been fixed by yesterday afternoon while the light was due to come on last night.

A spokesman said ships are supposed to have identification systems while radar in the East End could sweep the West End but there were blind spots which made the Gibbs Hill radar necessary and a speedy resumption of service needed.

Fairmont Southampton Hotel spokeswoman Shelley Meszoly said the guests' phone services is due to be fixed by this afternoon.

She said: "We had an electrical surge just as the electrical storm ran right over our hotel which affected our telephone system at around 2 p.m."

The main switchboard was still working and staff were asked to relay phone messages by running up to guests' rooms.

"We are working around the clock to try to get this solved as soon as possible."

The hotel also suffered a six-hour phone outage last week but the spokesman said the hotel had a state of the art system and the last time it had experienced problems was nine years ago.

Bermuda Weather Service Meteorologist Ian Currie said the storm had been caused by two air masses clashing over the Island in the Hamilton and Southampton areas.

"Combined with the heat on the Island it created a thunderstorm."