Fire breaks out at Empangeni substation

What happened

A fire broke out at a substation at the corner of Higgs and Segar roads in Empangeni on the morning of 24 April 2024. The City of uMhlathuze said the substation exploded and the immediate area lost power. Municipal Fire and Rescue members arrived promptly to put the blaze out. The municipality sent its electricity and energy team to investigate the cause and said restoration would be sped up. Injuries, the extent of damage and how long the outage lasted were not reported.

Contributing factors

The cause was not reported. The municipality said the fire was under investigation.

Lessons learned

1. A substation fire can cut power in the immediate area at once, so operators should be ready to isolate the affected plant and restore supply by other feeds where the network allows.
2. Fire crews should be called early, and equipment should not be returned to service until the cause has been checked.
3. Public updates should separate what is known, such as a fire, an explosion and an outage, from what is still being investigated.

Source

citizen.co.za