At 16:08 on 7 September 2011, eThekwini Electricity lost supply to a number of substations in Durban Central and surrounding substations. Areas affected were Umbilo, Glenwood, Berea, Morningside, Springfield, Marine Parade and Durban Central.
The fault was traced to a fire in the 132KV cable tunnel running under the pavement alongside Joseph Nduli (Russell) Street. The fire damaged the main 132 kV power cable as well as optic-fibre communications cables thereby disabling the high speed primary protection circuits and caused cascaded tripping at a number of substations.
As a result of this fault, a long voltage dip was experienced by customers as far afield as the South Durban Industrial basin which affected critical industrial processes.
Once the fault was discovered and isolated, power was restored progressively to the affected areas by alternative feeds. The last of the areas affected by this outage was restored by 20h08.
Investigations by the eThekwini Fire Department has confirmed that refuse that had accumulated in the cable tunnel was set alight. It is most likely that this was an unintentional act and no foul play is suspected.
It was also uncovered that vagrants were using parts of the cable tunnel as shelter.
Direct costs are estimated to be over a million rands and indirect losses to commerce and industry are expected to run into many millions of rands.
The Municipality regrets any inconvenience to customers and corrective measures are underway to clean up the cable duct and seal it off to prevent unauthorized access.
