WATCH | Third fire at Central Substation triggers another Johannesburg outage
A third fire at City Power’s Central Substation has caused another electricity outage affecting customers in Marshalltown and potentially surrounding areas.
The fire reportedly started in the early hours of Saturday morning. Johannesburg Emergency Management Services (EMS) is on site, while City Power teams are waiting for the smoke to clear before entering the affected sections to assess the damage.
City Power Acting CEO Charles Tlouane said the recurrence of fires at the critical facility within a short period was a serious concern.
“We are extremely concerned by what appears to be a sequence of incidents affecting the same critical electricity infrastructure within a very short period,” Tlouane said.
He added that City Power would not speculate on the cause until investigations were completed.
The latest incident comes as City Power was nearing completion of repairs following a second fire earlier this month. By Friday, 25 September, about 98% of the network affected by that fire had been restored, while all four damaged Ring Main Units had been replaced.
The second fire occurred at about 01:00 on 9 September, only hours after electricity had been restored following the first outage reported on 6 September. Preliminary indications suggested the fire may have been linked to theft and vandalism in underground cable tunnels, although the cause remained under investigation.
City Power said the cause and extent of damage from the latest fire were not yet known.
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