Pretoria – Johannesburg’s power utility City Power said on Wednesday some areas in and around the municipality would remain without power until repairs to infrastructure damaged by an underground tunnels fire on Monday was completed.
“City Power teams have been on site from morning to start with the repairs in the underground tunnels damaged by the fire. The work will involve the replacement of about 400 meters of cable and its associated joints,” spokesperson Isaac Mangena said.
“While most areas that were affected by the Monday fire have been restored through back-feeding, others will remain off until the repairs have been completed. They include Selby, parts of Booysens, Westgate, several streets in the CBD like Ntemi Piliso, Anderson, Harrison, Main, Commissioner, Pritchard, Market, Fox, Fredericks.”
Mangena said City Power could not, at this stage, give an estimated time for the restoration of electricity supply.
“Unfortunately we do not have ETR [estimated time of return] at the moment. It will be given after the team assessed the amount of time repairs would take,” he said.
“The investigation into the cause of the fire is still being investigated. We apologise to all those affected by this.”
Johannesburg Emergency Services (EMS) spent the whole of Monday extinguishing the raging inferno, which stretched about 3km underground in the highly populated city.
EMS spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said a team of around 20 fire fighters worked to extinguish the fire. He said EMS was alerted about the fire by a person who noticed smoke coming from underground at Gandhi Square. The scene of the fire was under Anderson Street.
“The fire was huge and it was difficult because it was a tunnel, and it had less oxygen supply, so we had to use oxygen tanks. It was only a small portion of the cables,” said Mulaudzi.
EMS has since handed the tunnels over to City Power to work on reconnecting parts of the city to the power grid.
IOL