Several Johannesburg suburbs are to remain without power as work to clear the damaged tunnels under the M1 highway begins after last week’s massive fire that caused millions in damage last Tuesday.
The cause of the disaster has been identified as cable thieves trying to steal the underground copper.
After several days of waiting for the area to be declared structurally sound by the Joburg Roads Agency and safe to enter by Joburg Emergency Management Services, the process of assessing the scale of the damage took several days while City Power battled to backfeed and reconfigure the network to try to restore power to affected areas.
“This is a vital step in City Power’s efforts to rehabilitate the underground network,” said spokesperson Isaac Mangena.
He said workers will now have to remove the fragments of cement slab that cracked and peeled off due to the heat from the flames, along with burnt cable and other forms of debris that have piled up on the surface of the 1.2km-long tunnel.
Only after clearing the rubble, will City Power be able to provide a more accurate estimate time of restoration.
On Saturday, the team managed to complete the tunnel inspection. During that process, they discovered that 300m of copper cable had been cut and stolen, proving that tampering was the cause of the blaze.
The outage, which hit customers in Parktown, Newtown, Braamfontein, the Johannesburg CBD, and surrounding areas, was found to have been caused by an underground fire along the M1 near Smit Street and the double-decker section between the Braamfontein and Fordsburg substations.
“Unfortunately, our back-feeding efforts have not been able to cover all affected customers — only a few. There are no alternative methods available to provide supply to the affected customers as the city does not have the capacity of generators to power all the affected suburbs,” Mangena sad on Sunday, explaining why so many suburbs were still without electricity.
He said City Power was “committed to rehabilitating the damaged electricity infrastructure and will restore supply as soon as we can”.
He was unable to say how much longer this would take but said updates would be provided.
TimesLIVE
>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : SowetanLive – https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2024-05-05-no-power-restoration-yet-for-suburbs-hit-by-m1-underground-cable-fire/
