Johannesburg - More than 20 eastern and north-western Joburg suburbs were plunged into darkness on Friday morning after fires broke out at four power substations and cables were stolen at another substation.
The incident caused traffic delays, with frustrated motorists pleading for pointsmen to be dispatched to their areas to ease traffic flow, and a motorcyclist in one area parking his vehicle on the side of the road to direct traffic.
In Ekurhuleni, emergency services workers raced against time to extinguish fires at four substations in the Benoni area.
Emergency Medical Services spokesman William Ntladi said that while they were trying to stop a fire at the substation in Rynfield at about 5.30am, two others were reported in Crystal Park and a third one at Farrarmere - all in the Benoni area.
This left residents in Rynfield, Crystal Park, Cloverdene, Ebotse Golf Estate, Chief Albert Luthuli, Morehill, Putfontein, Brentwood Park, Fairleads and parts of Northmead without electricity.
“The fire at Rynfield has been extinguished and now we are busy cooling the area down,” Ntladi said at about 8.30am.
He could not indicate when electricity would be restored to the areas.
Ntladi said they were still trying to determine the cause of the fires.
The City of Ekurhuleni’s Twitter page also reported power failures in Primrose and Sunnyridge due to a transformer that had blown up. It also said there were outages in Meyersdal and Mayberry in Alberton.
In Kempton Park, there was a power failure due to a faulty cable in Croydon.
Ekurhuleni metro police acting spokesman Kobeli Mokheseng said due to the power outages, there were serious traffic jams.
“One of the badly affected roads is Pretoria Road. We have sent pointsmen to the area to help with the traffic flow and to help with order as the emergency services work on clearing the area,” he said.
Adding fuel to the rage felt by residents and motorist was that they could not reach the Ekurhuleni municipality call centre as it was offline. The call centre was back online by 9am.
Residents of north-western suburbs were also plunged into darkness at 5am due to cable theft.
City Power spokeswoman Yumna Sheik said the cable trip had affected Weltevreden Park, Allans Nek, Bromhof, Randpark Ridge, Radiokop, Wilgeheuwel and Honeydew.
“Our technicians are trying to solve the problem. We cannot say when the power in the areas will be restored,” she said.
Other areas of Randburg, like Greymont, had also suffered outages this week due to cable theft, Sheik said.