The electrical substation in Kernite Street in Carletonville caught fire at around 18:00 on 2 June. Since then, the ratepayers in the area have been left in the dark. “We are not sure what happened there,” one of the street’s residents told the Herald. All that is known is that a woman living near the facility saw a fire and called for help. Some of the grass inside the fence around the substation was also burnt. On Tuesday, the Merafong City Local Municipality said children had set the grass next to the substation alight. When the Herald went to the substation on Monday, the gate was locked but there was a huge hole in the fence right next to it. It had been closed with only a few pieces of wire and anyone could have gained entry to the facility to cause even more damage. By Monday, the municipality’s communications department sent out a statement to confirm that an assessment of the damage had been completed. 
“The procurement of the material required to repair the extensive damage at the Kernite substation will be finalised today and the repairs will commence as soon as possible,” the spokes-person said on Tuesday. The municipality confirmed that Kernite Street, a portion of Agnew Street, Flint Street, Hornstone Street, Iridium Street, Jade Street and a portion of Kaolin Street were affected by the damage. “For safety reasons, all electrical installations and connections must be treated as live at all times,” the spokesperson added. Ratepayers of the area were up in arms, however, because the municipality had taken so long to repair the facility. According to a resident who was lucky enough to have a generator, it had used over R1,000’s worth of fuel by Tuesday. Councillors like Mr Devin Nieuwenhuyzen and Ben van der Berg constantly pressurised the municipality to work faster and sort the problems out. Meanwhile, Khutsong residents had also been stuck without electricity for more than two days by the time the newspaper went to print. It was not clear what had caused these outages.
