Residents of Lenasia had to flee their homes, which were flooded after incessant rains.
- Some parts of Johannesburg are without power due to heavy rain during the week.
- City Power said there may be delays for the team to reach certain areas to restore power.
- They said it may take more than a week for them to recover, weather permitting.
City Power is monitoring flooding that occurred in most of the southern and western parts of Johannesburg, causing outages that have yet to be repaired.
The City’s Disaster Administration is understood to have issued a warning, putting crews on high alert following heavy rain this week.
City Power spokesman Isaac Mangena said they had been in “disaster mode” since Monday’s severe thunderstorms.
#UpdateInterruption We are aware that power was not restored after the load outage in block 4. These areas include #Kew, #Bramley, Lyndhurst and vicinity. Technicians will be sent to investigate. We are sorry for the inconvenience. ^KM
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) December 10, 2022
“rains [on Friday] have exacerbated the situation by hampering our recovery efforts. We are still dealing with huge delays in different parts of the city, with court calls [on Saturday morning] sitting close to 4,000,” he said.
Half of those calls were made within 24 hours, with areas like Hurthill, Randburg, Roodepoort, Lenasia hard hit.
“While most of the trees in our infrastructure have been felled, what we are monitoring and attending to is the integrity of the equipment,” Mangena said.
“These include flooded chambers, submerged mini-substations, washed out poles, eroded cables, and cable faults with some outbursts after heavy storms.”
Heavy rain on Friday made matters worse in areas like Lenasia and Roodepoort, where there is currently flooding.
A mini-substation exploded after it flooded along Peacock Road in Lenasia, leaving residents without power.
“We can only attend to it after the water has calmed,” Mangena said.
READ | ‘I need help’: Screams are heard as Lenasia residents use boats to rescue neighbors from flooded homes
“Many others are submerged, some poles and overhead lines are blown away. Water also seeped through shattered infrastructure, stumbling in some areas.”
He said highways around Klipspruit, Florida, Lenasia and some parts of Roodepoort were also flooded, making it difficult for crews to respond as quickly as they’d like to outages.
Mangena said they anticipated it would take more than a week to recover, weather permitting, with most issues expected to be resolved as the storms die down.
“Our recovery efforts are also thwarted by load reduction, which is now in higher stages, which has really had a huge impact on our infrastructure, resources and revenue.
“We have used all available resources to deal with delays caused by power outages and storms, and we call on our customers for patience and cooperation as we meet the challenges and ensure minimal interruptions to their power supply.” .
City Power said they were working alongside councilors and other city authorities and would continue to inform residents of developments in their respective areas.
