Thousands in Joburg without electricity as City Power scrambles to fix flood-hit infrastructure
City Power officials are attending to the areas experiencing power outages due to heavy rainfall and flash floods in Johannesburg.
The power utility says Thursday’s floods have left thousands of residents without power in southern and western regions of the city.
Residents may experience delay in response times and repairs due to the scale of the damage.
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena says Thursday rainfall has exacerbated existing faults.
"We are still dealing with huge backlogs in different parts of the city, with outage calls this morning sitting close to 4000. Half of those calls are over 24 hours, with areas such as Hursthill, Randburg, Roodepoort, Lenasia heavily affected."
Mangena says the damage include flooded and submerged mini-substations, washed away poles and eroded cables.
"A mini-substation exploded after it got flooded along Peacock Road in Lenasia, leaving residents without power. We can only attend to it after the water have subsided. Many others are submerged, some poles and over headlines blown. Water also seeped through into the vandalised infrastructure, tripping in some areas.
"The roads around Klipspruit, Florida, Lenasia and some parts of Roodepoort are flooded, making it difficult for our teams to respond as quickly as we would want to the outages in the affected areas."
The South African Weather Service has in the meantime issued a warning of persistent rainfall in the coming days over the central and eastern parts of the country with a risk of more localised flooding.
ALSO READ:
