Pretoria – Business was disrupted for a few hours at Menlyn Park mall in Pretoria east on Sunday morning after a fire at an electrical transformer.
With one section of the car park covered with dense smoke, the Garsfontein Road entrance to the western side of the mall was closed temporarily while emergency personnel secured the site.
Nobody was hurt in the incident but the centre was on back-up generator power with many of its shops closed for business while technicians worked to fix the damage.
On Sunday, clients waited almost two hours for power to be restored to the mega mall which recently underwent a massive refurbishment and extension making it the biggest in the region with more than 500 shops.
Menlyn Park general manager Olive Ndebele confirmed business at the shopping centre was disrupted but Tshwane Emergency Services and electricians responded swiftly to attend to the problem.
The fire was extinguished before it could cause serious damage or affect shops in the mall.
Tshwane Emergency Services spokesperson Johan Pieterse said it had not been a major fire and it was confined to a substation.
“Our team is clearing the smoke and cooling the damaged equipment before technicians can do a proper assessment of the damage and investigate the cause, Ndebele said on Sunday afternoon.
Ndebele said nobody was hurt, but customers had been frustrated to find shops closed. Larger shops with their own generators – such as Woolworths and Edgars – remained open while others reopened once power had been restored.