Fire reported at Vladivostok substations leaves homes without power

What happened

On 23 January 2024, explosions and fires were reported in Vladivostok, and hundreds of homes were left without power. Local reports said substations on Novozhilova Street and in Tikhaya Bukhta Bay were on fire, and media reported that more than 250 houses in Tikhaya Bukhta were de-energised. The Far East Distribution Network Company said that at about 19:00 two transformers were shut down at the Zagorodnaya substation in the Borisenko district, and that a fire was recorded in a closed distribution unit, not in the transformers.

It is not clear from this report whether that account describes the same sites named by residents. Power engineers and firefighters attended. The cause, any injuries, and how long the outage lasted were not reported.

Contributing factors

Not reported. Local accounts of explosions and the company's account of a fire in a closed distribution unit have not been reconciled in this report.

Lessons learned

1. Early public accounts of which substations are on fire should be checked against the network operator before sites are treated as confirmed.
2. A fire in a closed distribution unit can take transformers out of service even when the transformers themselves are not alight, so isolation and restoration plans should cover the switchgear as well as the transformers.
3. Outage figures from residents and from the operator may differ, so operators should issue one early statement of the sites involved and the customers affected.

Source

pravda.com.ua