City Power faces perfect storm in Florida
Electricity across large portions of Florida remains off as City Power struggles to attend to the various problems.
Several neighbourhoods across Florida are currently without electricity.
The Roodepoort Record spoke to Ward 70 Councillor Caleb Finn, who says the longest unresolved power outage at the moment is at corners Die Ou Pad and West Avenue.
“This outage has been ongoing for eight days now,” says Finn, adding, “As I understand it, there was initially no contractor available to attend to the problem. When one eventually came out on Sunday [May 3], a cable fault was discovered.”
He mentions that the test branch was called to locate the fault, which they did, but the contractor had moved on to another job by this time.
The following areas are without power:
• Georginia
• Hamberg
• Discovery
• Florida Park
• Florida Hills
• Florida North
“City Power’s internal team dug up the cable on Monday [May 4], but as the contractor was still occupied at another site, they left the hole open and left.
Related article: City Power still battling to restore electricity in Florida
“On Monday night, a sewage manhole overflowed and the hole filled up with sewage. Johannesburg Water was called to repair the sewerage system, but it rained on Tuesday night, May 5, and the hole filled up with water.
He says a contractor was eventually available on Thursday, May 7, and he fixed the cable fault, but this did not fix the problem.
“Now they are conducting further testing to establish where further faults lie, so they may be addressed.”
Finn adds that in the meantime, the Florida North substation started tripping for unknown reasons, resulting in electricity to residents fed from here going on and off.
“They are currently trying to determine the reason that the substation keeps tripping.”
Another outage affecting Hamberg and Georginia, Creswell Park and Florida Lake has been ongoing for the past two days.
“This is allegedly due to a cable fault, but contractors are busy elsewhere at the moment.”
To top it all, the William Nicoll Substation lost power earlier this afternoon, May 8, affecting Florida Hills, parts of Florida Park, Florida North, and Flora Cliff.
There is still no word from City Power regarding the status of this outage.
City Power has been quite proactive in reporting on progress regarding the different outages, with regular updates being sent out via community WhatsApp groups, but this has done little to ease tensions as residents remain understandably upset.
