for around 90 minutes yesterday.

Bermuda Police Service's Prospect headquarters was in the centre of the blackout which also hit 330 homes in the Devonshire area.

A Police spokeswoman said HQ computers went down -- but emergency calls were not affected.

"We do have our own back-up,'' she said. "There were no real problems in the control room.

"It's just that the computers were down for a while. Belco engineers got here very quickly and we have no complaints.'' The power cut, between 8.30 and 10 a.m., froze radio and TV shows being beamed from ZBM at the Bermuda Broadcasting Company building on Fort Hill Road.

Operations manager Delano Ingham said: "All we could do was sit and wait until the electricity came back on.

"These things happen unfortunately and when they do, everything shuts down.

It did delay news programmes although it did not significantly affect our schedule for the day.

"However, during the time of the power cut it was impossible to broadcast. We were totally out of power. The only thing on was the emergency lighting.'' Mr. Ingham said the firm did not have an emergency generator because annual maintenance fees would not prove cost-effective.

"This is probably the only time we've been out of power this year,'' he said.

"It wouldn't really be viable for us to run our own generator.'' The blackout, caused by a switch fault in Prospect, also caused a 20 minute power cut on the Cedar Park housing estate, the Government bus depot and Ocean View Golf Club.

CedarBridge Academy's Clocktower Building was also out of power for 20 minutes.

Belco spokeswoman Robin McPhee said severe morning weather conditions caused the power cut.

She said : "The outage was a result of trees falling onto overhead lines.

"The switch went out just before 8.30 and many areas only suffered a 20-minute power cut. Others were out for an hour-and-a-half and power was fully restored around 10 a.m.

"The total number of residential customers affected in the area was approximately 330.'' There were also unconnected "isolated outages'' in Devonshire and Pembroke, following gale-force winds and morning rain.

Fallen trees cut power to five homes in Pembroke in the morning and to 15 homes in Devonshire around lunchtime.

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