Lights out in Joburg CBD as city battles underground fire
Firefighters in the City of Johannesburg battled a fire which broke out in an underground tunnel on Monday morning.
The blaze broke out in the Johannesburg CBD – leaving parts of the area in the dark.
Areas affected include large parts of Selby and the surrounding suburbs of New Centre, Village Deep, Park Central and Wemmer.
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena says by the afternoon technicians are still unable to access the tunnels due to the safety concerns.
“By early afternoon EMS teams were busy trying to suck out the smoke from underground. The EMS was still to determine the area where the fire is located within the 3km stretch of the tunnel. City Power technicians will not be able to go underground today.
“We anticipate that we may be able to access the tunnels on Tuesday afternoon, depending on an all-clear from the emergency and city's environmental services. The air quality and structural integrity will also be cleared before technicians can go down.”
Mangena says the cause of the fire is being investigated.
“In the meantime, City Power teams are working on plans to partially restore some of the affected areas through backfeeding from Central Substation, if all goes according to plan. Most of the customers especially business customers have been contacted and notified of the fire.”
Rush hour traffic on Tuesday morning will be affected by the outage as traffic lights in the CBD are not working.
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