Less than 1,000 households are still without power today, according to Belco spokesperson Robin Sidders.

Ms Sidders told The Royal Gazette that while the Island's utility has not met their goal of restoring power to all affected households by the end of yesterday, it wasn't for lack of trying.

"The guys have done a tremendous job - they've been working flat out in a very difficult situation," she said. "We've done the best job we can possibly do."

About 150 Belco employees were on the job since Thursday's storm which at one point left over 20,000 households without power.

The restoration effort involved the full customer service staff, engineers and some 23 mobile crews representing about 80 people working in the field. Belco also had its cafeteria staff delivering food to the field.

And a number of companies - four landscapers, one independent contractor, Cablevision and Bermuda Telephone Company - pitched in to help with bucket trucks and in some cases work crews.

But, apparently, for some residents that is not good enough. Belco had to request Police presence at their Serpentine Road headquarters when some customers started getting irate.

"Frustrations have built to a level where some of our customers are extremely angry," Ms Sidders said.

The company's phone system could not handle the thousands of calls that were coming in and of those that did get through, many insisted on talking to - or swearing at - a service representative instead of just leaving their details, holding up other customers.

"Because of the frustration of not being able to get through, some people came to Belco," she said. A minority engaged in threatening behaviour and the Police were called in for protection. Other customers took to the streets looking for Belco crews and demanding that they restore power in their own neighbourhoods.

Ms Sidders was quick to point out that the majority of customers have been patient and that the crews had received plenty of praise for their work.

"This is the most severe storm since Emily (1987) and certainly from Belco's perspective the highest volume of outages since Emily," she continued. "Understandably people's expectations are not to be without power for more than a day or two.

"However when we have more than 60 percent of our customer base without power and sustained damage to our system, it's not surprising that it took so long. I think we did really well in getting our main circuits up in one day considering we lost 65 (out of 90) circuits."

Restoration delays were particularly acute in heavily wooded areas like Langton Hill in Pembroke and Lovers Lane in Paget. In those areas power lines had been buried underneath fallen trees, making the work more time consuming, explained Ms Sidders.

"All of these areas took more than four or five hours - that's why it's been difficult to reach our goal of having everyone restored by the end of the weekend."

She said that barring similar challenges in the remaining areas, all power should be restored by the end of tonight.

Both bridges into St. George's were out of action over the weekend after suffering electrical problems, said Harbour Radio.

Longbird Bridge stopped working during the height of the storm while the bridge to Ferry Reach stopped working at around midday on Saturday.

It was not clear last night when the bridges would be working. Harbour Radio said the bridges were open to traffic but could not let tall boats through.