Parts of Joburg plunged into darkness as storms hit

Parts of Johannesburg were left without electricity at the weekend after severe storms blew off the roof of the Florida substation.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said this led to flooding of the feeder board at the substation.

“Our teams have been hard at work repairing the damage of both the roof and the feeder board inside the substation. This has been a 24-hour operation which seeks to restore power to our customers as a matter of urgency and priority,” said Mangena.

“Our shift system has ensured that we had teams on site for the past 24 hours and for the next 24 hours, until electricity has been restored to every single affected customer,” Mangena added.

Areas and places affected include Florida, Florida Park, Discovery and Flora hospital.

He said City Power would provide hourly updates to all affected customers.

“We further urge all affected customers to switch off all their electricity appliances, even when they do not have power. This makes it easy for us to switch on electricity without experiencing network overload and trips during the restoration period.”

Meanwhile, the Sebenza substation tripped causing an outage in the following areas:

• Alexandra;
• Observatory;
• Bellevue;
• Orchards;
• Westfield; and
• Cydna.

TimesLIVE