About 200 homes throughout the Island are still without electricity today after the weekend's gale-force winds wreaked havoc with the Island's power lines.

But with repairmen working from daybreak until midnight, the Bermuda Electric Light Company is hoping the residents will not have to spend a third night without power.

An estimated 7,500 homes lost power at the height of the storm on Sunday. That number was reduced to 500 homes by midnight yesterday with most being in Pembroke, Belco spokesperson Mrs. Linda Smith Wilson said.

The single biggest obstacle hampering the progress of repair men was overgrown trees, she said.

"For instance, in Spanish Point they had to spend four hours trimming trees before they could get to the lines to repair them,'' Mrs. Smith said. "And they spent all day trying to restore power in Stadium Lane in Warwick where four or five poles were brought down by one casuarina tree.'' Areas where workers spent one to three hours cutting back trees and shrubs included Hill View Estates, Cedar Hill in Warwick, Tribe Road 1 in Paget, Stowe Hill, Store Hill and Radnor Road.

Mrs. Smith conceded that Belco's telephone system -- jammed with callers yesterday -- was unable to handle the situation.

"It has been upgraded in the last few years but we are still absolutely inundated,'' she said. "We are taking a look at it because we understand people are inconvenienced by not being able to get through.'' Mrs. Smith said although repairing the storm damage was costing thousands of dollars, Belco's main concern was restoring power.

Mrs. Smith said Belco believed there would have been far fewer outages had residents kept trees trimmed.

Belco conducted an Island-wide tree-trimming exercise two years ago on public and private properties with the owners' permission. And, she noted, the number of outages decreased significantly during storms since then.

But due to the summer's heavy rainfall and high temperatures, the overgrowth had returned in force.

She said "under-grounding'' would not be a complete solution to storm-related power outages.

Belco had a policy of investing $2 million a year in laying main lines underground and had so far covered several areas including Shelly Bay.

However, estate road branch lines and service lines to houses were still overhead and it would cost some $300 million to place them all underground in ten years, which was totally unfeasible, Mrs. Smith said.

Even then, there was still a chance of cables being damaged by hurricane-uprooted trees, she said.

"There is no system to prevent power loss in these situations,'' she said.

"Tree-trimming is really key though. If trees were kept away from overhead power lines then the number of outages would go down considerably.'' Mrs. Smith noted Belco had been "inundated'' with calls from residents willing to pay for their power lines to be placed underground. In fact, Belco was six months behind in answering those calls and was currently considering ways of better handling the situation.