South Africa’s reverse discrimination policy cause electrical blackouts several hours a day.
Restaurants, theatres, clubs and cinemas across Cape Town lost millions of rands in Friday night’s city-wide blackout, which has been blamed on “a lack of maintenance and continued neglect” of antiquated machinery and transmission lines.
The untimely blackout that hit Cape Town at 8.45pm on Friday and lasted until the early hours of Saturday was a huge financial blow because it struck on the first weekend of the month, when many people have money to spend.
Businesses that lost out also included conference centres, petrol stations, galleries and 24-hour manufacturing concerns.
On Saturday Eskom apologised to its customers for the technical fault involving a conductor which occurred at the major sub-station of Muldersvlei-Acacia, plunging most of the city into darkness. Most of the northern suburbs and Khayelitsha were unaffected.
A number of smaller sub-stations feed off Acacia, and in turn provide electricity to more than half the city.
City electricity spokesperson Charles Kadalie said the city gets its main supply from Acacia, which is next to the N1.
“We were informed that a technical fault had plunged the city into darkness. At 2.30am the 400kV line was brought back into service. Some areas only received power at 4.30am.
“There are still secondary problems, in areas like Constantia and Scarborough.”
Kadalie described the incident as “highly abnormal”.
The Cape Town Regional Chamber of Commerce’s chief executive officer, Albert Schuitmaker, will demand answers from Eskom at the reactivated provincial Energy Risk Management Committee’s weekly meeting this week.
“It’s either poor maintenance or deliberate. We want answers. What really caused it? Who will be held accountable and what will be done to ensure it does not happen again?”
He said the blackout, which occurred during the hospitality industry’s prime time on a Friday night, was “economically devastating”.
“It’s difficult to put a figure to it but it is a huge economic blow. The losses will be enormous.”
He said some businesses assumed it was the usual two-hour load-shedding and made alternative plans which all went awry when the power did not come back on as expected.
Professor Christo Viljoen, an award-winning electrical engineer and retired Eskom council member, blamed the blackout on “a lack of maintenance and continued neglect of antiquated” machinery and transmission lines.
Eskom not only had a generating capacity problem but old equipment, he said. “It’s like driving around in an old car from the 60s that is not properly maintained. You’re definitely going to run into problems.”
But Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger said it was a technical fault and nothing “suspect”.
On Saturday, the hospitality industry and business sector were still reeling from the blow and counting huge financial losses.
The Chevron Refinery in Milnerton was forced to shut down because of the blackout, and it will take seven days to be fully up and running again.
It was shut down without without incident by operational staff, using emergency procedures.
Power supply to the refinery was restored at 2am on Saturday.
Spokesperson Phumi Nhlapo said they began start-up late on Saturday. “Refinery production units will be restarted in sequence over a period of seven days. During start-up activities some smoke may be visible from the refinery’s flare.”
The refinery has sufficient stocks of petrol and diesel to tide it over. However, contingency plans must be put in place to augment jet fuel stocks.
Friday evenings always translate into good business for Cape Town’s popular nightspots. But the blackout saw many establishments close their doors early.
The Stones bar in Long Street, where revellers usually party on the balcony until the early hours, predicted a loss of about R3 000 on door fees alone.
The day manager, Mario West, said they had “an awesome daytime trade”, and the power failure put a huge dent in the evening’s takings. “We kept on serving the people who were already inside, but we didn’t allow any more in.”
Many Long Street bars kept track of takings by writing them down or using calculators, using dozens of candles to provide light.
At the Hemisphere nightclub in Riebeeck Street’s Absa building, disappointed clubbers were forced to trudge down over 30 flights of stairs in the fire escape.
Natasha Chhedi, who works at the club, said they initially expected the lights to come back on, but after some time had no choice but to close for the evening.
Service stations in the city were also left in disarray and nervous drivers had to drive around looking for petrol, many congregating in untidy queues outside the Engen garage in Orange Street.
Movie-goers at Nu Metro’s V&A Waterfront and Canal Walk cinema were also left in the dark but were later offered re-admission tickets as compensation.
Patrons at the Baxter Theatre complex who came to watch the Joe Barber show will return to the theatre for a performance on Saturday. But the shows went on in the complex’s two other theatres, thanks to generators.
Baxter spokesperson Fahiem Stellenboom had been attending the Suidoosterfees’s tribute concert, Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation at Artscape, when the power went out. Stellenboom said the show was stopped after the failure, which occurred just 30 minutes into the concert, and guests, including Cape Town mayor Helen Zille, piled into the foyer for snacks and drinks.
The city’s major tertiary hospitals are protected from load-shedding, but they were as vulnerable to last night’s blackout as everyone else.
The cableway was largely unaffected as the last cablecar went down at 8.30pm, 15 minutes before the failure.
Traffic officials and emergency services said no major accidents were reported.
Loading ...
