Fourth fire hits City Power's Central substation in Marshalltown

What happened

City Power's Central substation in Marshalltown, in the Johannesburg CBD, has suffered a fourth fire, according to Eyewitness News reporting on 14 October 2026. The most recent fire broke out overnight and caused a further outage, following earlier outages linked to fires at the same substation. Some residents of the suburb, which the report says is home to more than 4,000 people, have been without electricity for more than two weeks.

Electricity was restored for some households on 8 October, but other parts of the suburb were still experiencing outages. In a statement the previous week, City Power said that 90% of its infrastructure had been restored, with repairs under way in Selby East and West, Carlton, Fox Street and surrounding areas. The report does not state the cause of the latest fire.

Contributing factors

City Power suspects cable theft and vandalism caused the month-long power outages in Marshalltown. The cause of the fires themselves has not been reported. A Centre for Development and Enterprise report, which covers City Power's infrastructure failures more broadly rather than this substation alone, attributes them to maintenance backlogs and weak management.

Lessons learned

1. Physical security of substation cabling and equipment matters as much as electrical design, because theft and vandalism are suspected in some repeated substation outages.
2. Repeated faults at the same site should prompt a root-cause review and a repair plan before restoration is declared complete.
3. Utilities should keep affected customers informed of restoration timelines and remedial work, since trust erodes quickly during extended outages.

More lessons on theft, arson and site security, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Source

ewn.co.za