A blown electrical panel at the Harbor Landing timeshare resort on Beach Street in Tisbury sent 36 people to area hotels Thursday night while officials assessed what happened. Tisbury’s fire and police departments converged on the Harbor Landing building Thursday night after smoke triggered an evacuation.
Harbor Landing general manager Bonnie Bearse told The Times on Friday that the smoke smelled like sulfur. Tisbury building commissioner Ross Seavey and Tisbury Fire Chief Greg Leland spoke with The Times outside the building on Friday. Both officials said the Harbor Landing had been inspected, and was reopened for residents to return.
Bearse said the building is run as a timeshare from mid-April until the end of October each year. In the remaining months, the timeshare units are rented out for affordable housing, she said. Seavey said it wasn’t clear at first if the blown electrical panel was all that had gone wrong Thursday night. Town officials took the time to make sure the problem was limited to the panel before letting people back inside. The age of the panel may have contributed to its failure, Seavey said.
Leland said his department assisted Eversource with digging up an electrical box out on the edge of Beach Street so repairs and upgrades could be made. That box was connected to the panel. Some electrical code issues were discovered in the building, but Seavey described them as not life- or safety-related, so they didn’t need to be addressed before residents were allowed to return.
Bearse commended the response from Tisbury first responders and the building department. She also thanked Best Electric for tackling the problem on short notice, and thanked area lodging establishments like the Vineyard Harbor Hotel for accommodating displaced Harbor Landing residents at a discount.