Fire at Cardiff Hall substation causes outage in St Ann

What happened

A fire at the Cardiff Hall substation in Runaway Bay, St Ann, Jamaica, disrupted electricity supply overnight, the night before the Jamaica Observer reported it on 24 June 2017. The article says the fire happened 'last night', so the exact date is inferred. The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo) said in a release that it was assessing the damage and investigating the cause of the fire. Crews restored supply ahead of the target time of midday on 24 June.

The company said further repairs would be needed, which could cause some further service disruption, and that it would make every effort to minimise the impact. The affected areas were Runaway Bay, Discovery Bay, Salem, Queens Highway, James Hill, Bohemia, Cave Valley, Nine Miles, Watt Town, Aenon and surrounding areas. The source does not report injuries, damage values, outage duration or the cause of the fire.

Contributing factors

The cause of the fire was not reported. JPSCo was still assessing damage and investigating the cause at the time of publication.

Lessons learned

1. A substation fire can cut supply across many communities at once, so operators should map which feeders and areas depend on each substation and plan alternative supply routes.
2. Operators should keep crews ready to restore supply quickly and tell customers the restoration target and any follow-up repair outages.
3. Publishing the list of affected areas early helps customers and local authorities plan for the outage.

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

Source

jamaicaobserver.com