An article on page three of the July 15 edition of The Royal Gazette entitled Fire leaves parts of Hamilton in the dark should be clarified.

Six businesses in total at the eastern end of Church Street were left in the dark after the power had to be switched off because of a fault in a low Parts of Hamilton were blacked out yesterday after an electric cable fire cut the power supply.

And some Hamilton businesses were forced to close early because of the blackout.

Joseph Sampson, owner of Sampson's Fabrics Ladies' and Gents' Tailoring, said yesterday afternoon: "I sent my whole staff home at 11 a.m., We haven't had any power since then.'' "I've lost a lot of business today because of this.'' he said.

Belco spokeswoman Robin McPhee said the outage was a result of a fault at the end of low voltage cables.

"The fault is believed to have caused some smoke damage to the pole as well as sparking.

"In order to fix the problems the electricity was turned off,'' she told The Royal Gazette .

The fire occurred on Church Street, near to Joell's Alley just after 9.30 a.m.

Firefighters were called to the scene to put out the blaze, which started in underground cables.

The sparking happened at ducts at the bottom of the pole outside the Bermuda Youth Library. The sparking caused a flame to shoot upwards, damaging the pole.

Bermuda Youth Library head librarian Marla Smith said that the outage did not affect them.

She said "We were unaware of any problem until the fire trucks arrived.'' Belco crews were last night still working on the problem and had to dig up the road to get to the cables.

But Ms McPhee said they hoped to restore normal service by this morning.