ETHEKWINI Municipality has responded to questions about the recent increase in the number of electricity substations that have caught alight. The day the response was received a substation at Poinsettia Place in Astra Park went up in flames.

Also read: Fire at Doonside substation causes blackout

Over the past two months, five substations have inexplicably caught alight or exploded in wards 90 and 97.

In October, the Dan Pienaar Road substation in Amanzimtoti exploded, leaving residents without electricity for two days. In November, Isipingo’s Willow Creek Place substation and the Doonside substation caught fire within six days of each other. On December 8, the Almond and Radbourne roads substation in Warner Beach exploded, leaving residents in the greater Kingsburgh area in the dark and on December 11 the substation at Pointsettia Place caught alight.

At the time of the Dan Pienaar Road fire, councillor André Beetge said technicians could not pinpoint the cause. The outage caused by the most recent fire in Astra Park came when the whole South Coast was experiencing a water outage. This caused many residents in Kingsburgh to spend two days without water and electricity.

eThekwini Municipality’s communications manager Mduduzi Ncalane said electrical substations catch fire or explode for many reasons, some of which cannot be controlled.

“The most common one is when a fault within the system leads to arcing. When electrical arcing occurs due to a fault, it generates intense heat and can ignite nearby materials, causing a fire,” said Ncalane.

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