'Vandalism' plunges parts of Joburg into darkness

Some parts of Johannesburg have been plunged into darkness after a pylon collapsed due to what authorities said was "suspected vandalism".

“A pylon carrying 88k/v of electricity from Eskom's Edna substation to City Power's Ennerdale and Hopefield substations came down this afternoon after what is suspected to be vandalism and theft by criminals in the area,” City Power said in a statement.

City Power and Eskom technicians and engineers were on Thursday evening working to restore power in the affected suburbs.

According to City Power, bolts and steel sheets supporting the pylon structure were stolen, weakening the structure which fell on Thursday afternoon.

“Some roads in the area had to be closed to traffic because some of the live overhead lines from the pylon fell into the roads," the authority said.

The suburbs affected by the outage include Ennerdale and parts of Lawley.

“Finetown is also affected as the overhead line from Lunar substation got affected by this accident.

“City Power is working with Eskom to investigate this matter,” said City Power chief executive Lerato Setshedi.

“We are also investigating how the pylon came down, and whether there was any damage to structures on the ground including houses. By this afternoon there were no known injuries or deaths reported, but we have teams on the ground to investigate all these,” Setshedi added.

He said both City Power and Eskom would investigate the cost and extent of the damage caused by the incident.

“We apologise to the customers affected by this outage. We currently do not have ETR (Estimated Time of Return) for power supply.”