Firebomb Attack Exposes Vulnerability Of Guyana’s Power Grid

By Mark DaCosta– Our nation’s electricity network has become a target, and the question now is whether the authorities can protect it before the next attack. At about 22:45 on Tuesday, 10 November, two men on a motorcycle reportedly approached the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) substation at Good Hope, East Coast Demerara, and one of them hurled a lit gasoline bomb over the perimeter before both fled. CCTV captured the act. Police now hold one suspect, who says two people carried out the attack and two others planned it. Three remain at large, and a motorcycle believed to have been used has been recovered. The suspect also says an accomplice spoke of another strike in Georgetown “in the near future.”

The escape from disaster owes more to luck than to design. GPL has described the act as deliberate sabotage of its 69-kilovolt switchyard, and says supply was not interrupted. The company estimates that serious damage could have taken at least a year to repair, at a cost running into billions of dollars.

Full coverageTwo People Allegedly Firebomb GPL’s Good Hope Substation on East Coast Demerara19 reports

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The facility’s importance explains why it may have been chosen. Good Hope is one of GPL’s principal substations, a junction that moves power between Demerara and Berbice. Losing it would have strained the grid well beyond the East Coast. A December 2025 explosion at the same site, whose cause was not given, took the facility offline and left several areas without power for over an hour. That episode showed how quickly one point of failure spreads, and this attack suggests someone was prepared to cause such failure on purpose.