Germiston plunged into darkness after Elsburg substation explosion

Just after 7am on Tuesday morning, businesses surrounding the Elsburg substation heard a loud bang, shortly after which several suburbs were plunged into darkness.

The cause of the outage has been confirmed as an explosion and building collapse at the Elsburg substation in Ostend Road, reports Germiston City News.

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The affected areas include, but are not limited to, Delville, Collin Wade, the industrial area of Germiston South, industrial areas fed from Enterprise, and parts of Hazeldene, Germiston South, Elsburg, and the Germiston CBD.

Germiston City News visited the scene and spoke to Ekurhuleni chief area engineer Peter Khunou, who explained that an investigation was underway to discover the cause of the explosion.

“We are not sure when exactly the explosion happened or what the cause was,” Khunou said.

“We are hoping to have more answers by this afternoon.”

Khunou further explained that while teams were on the ground investigating, calls were being made to assess whether or not a portable substation could be brought to the site.

“We are hoping to restore power to the affected areas temporarily while repairs to the substation are done,” Khunou explained.

Khunou explained one of the setbacks faced when restoring power is getting all the relevant departments together so that decisions can be made.

“This can make determining a turnaround time difficult,” he said.

Ward 39 councillor Alta de Beer and DA PR councillor Sally Nene were also on scene and will communicate updates to the community affected by the outage.

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