Digi almost finished with restoring infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Lisa

By Benjamin Flowers: Belize’s national telecoms provider, Digi, says that the company is almost finished with restoring all that was damaged when Hurricane Lisa hit the country earlier this month.

Digi issued an update this week, noting that restorative works in the southside and northside of Belize City, along with works in Burrell Boom Village were up to 99 percent complete, while works in Ladyville were at 98 percent.

Breaking Belize News (BBN) spoke with Douglas Westby, coordinator for the company’s Emergency Operations Committee (EOC), who explained that preparedness and good fortune enabled Digi to swiftly restore damaged infrastructure and get its customers back online.

Westby said that the company has a detailed hurricane preparedness plan which has been activated several times in recent years, and was activated the moment Lisa became an imminent threat. He noted that none of Digi’s towers were knocked down during the storm and the majority of the company’s buildings also emerged from the storm with minimal to no damage.

“During the storm, our network stayed up and most people were able to continue to use the internet,” Westby said.

He added that much of the damage was related to the fact that Digi’s cables run on Belize Electricity Limited posts, many of which received considerable damage during the storm.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, Digi also rolled out humanitarian assistance to affected families and communities. Amaris Leal, Communications Representative at the Public Relations Department for Digi, told BBN that the company launched three campaigns immediately after the storm.

Those campaigns were the ‘Be Connected campaign’, which saw prepaid customers receive 680 MB of data for free to be able to connect with loved ones and obtain news updates; the ‘Be Charged campaign’, where the company opened its office doors to customers who had no electricity so they could charge up to two devices for a half hour, as well as taking a mobile charging station into affected communities so residents could charge their devices free of cost; and the ‘Be Family campaign’, where the company donated perishable food items, and sanitary supplies to families. These items were distributed by the National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO).

Digi also distributed items to volunteers and first responders who were assisting with cleanup efforts after the storm.

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