Substation fire in Gzira causes outage and precautionary evacuation

What happened

Police confirmed that a fire developed at the Gżira substation in Triq Sir Patrick Stuart. Enemalta said a small fire started at about 1.00pm at a substation in a private apartments block. Civil Protection attended and the flames were extinguished shortly afterwards. Some residents in Gżira were evacuated as a precaution, and no one was hurt. The outage affected some 3,276 consumers. Enemalta restored supply to the majority of houses and businesses in less than an hour. About 300 consumers directly connected to the substation were still without electricity while repairs were prepared. The cause was not reported.

Lessons learned

1. A substation inside a residential block needs a pre-agreed evacuation and access plan with the fire service.
2. Even a small substation fire can cut supply to thousands of consumers, so restoration priorities and customer updates should be ready in advance.
3. Customers fed directly from the damaged substation may stay off supply after the wider network is restored, so isolation and temporary supply options should be planned.

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

Source

tvmnews.mt