/ 9 January 2006

Cause of Jo’burg power failures not yet known

The cause of Sunday night’s power failure that left at least 14 Johannesburg suburbs in the dark is not yet known, City Power said on Monday morning.

Spokesperson Sol Masolo said the outage occurred after a substation tripped.

”The cause of the trip was not yet known, but we will investigate it,” he said.

Longdale, Emmarentia, Parktown, Parktown North, Northcliff, Forest Town, Linden, Parkview, Victory Park, Risidale, Greenside and Roosevelt Park were without electricity for about an hour.

Power failures also occurred in Weltevreden Park on Sunday evening.

On Monday morning, Greenside was again without electricity due to a ”distributor fault”.

Masolo said that by 9.30am on Monday, power to 80% of the suburbs had been restored.

”We first want to restore power to the area before we investigate the cause of the fault,” Masolo said. ”But it will be thoroughly investigated.” — Sapa