Fire at Metairie substation leaves more than 10,000 without power

What happened

On 29 June 2018 a fire occurred at an Entergy power substation at Cleary Avenue and Iota Street in central Metairie. The East Bank Consolidated Fire Department responded just before 5 p.m. Entergy said the fire was in a piece of equipment. Adjacent equipment had to be de-energised so crews could extinguish it safely. The fire was under control as of 5 p.m. Entergy reported 10,506 residences and businesses without power in an area bordered by Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Airline Drive, Transcontinental Drive and North Causeway Boulevard. The exact location and cause were not immediately available. Restoration was expected around 7:30 p.m.

Contributing factors

The cause was not immediately available. The only reported operational factor is that adjacent equipment had to be de-energised so the fire could be extinguished safely.

Lessons learned

1. Substation fire response can require adjacent equipment to be de-energised before crews can work safely, so operators should keep an isolation plan that the fire service can use.
2. A fire in one piece of equipment can still cut supply across a wide area when neighbouring plant must be taken out of service.
3. Until the cause is known, early outage and restoration figures should be treated as provisional and checked against later utility reports.

More lessons on fire suppression and firefighting, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Not yet known

• Exact location of the fire inside the substation
• Model and age of the equipment
• Duration of the power outage

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Source

nola.com