The City of Johannesburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda confirmed on Monday in a short video posted on social media to update the residents that Eikenhof pump station was tripped by lightning strike. Picture: Video screenshot/X
Following two weeks of dry taps, City Power’s Eikenhof substation, that supplies the Eikenhof pump station with electricity, was again tripped by a suspected lightning strike in Soweto on Monday night at around 8pm.
The outage, which lasted for about two hours, affected several suburbs in the south, including Eldorado Park and Nancefield.
This is the second recent outage to plunge residents into a deep water crisis in which many of them have been stranded for several days on end with no water.
This was confirmed by Johannesburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda on Monday at the scene in a short video posted on social media to update the residents.
The mayor and other city officials went to the site of the disruption to investigate the source of the trip and the impact thereof.
Gwamanda said they would provide a detailed report on Tuesday morning to determine the extent of the trip.
“We are waiting for a clear report from Joburg Water to give us a clear indication as to how it has affected the water supply. We will give you an update first thing in the morning on the disruptions,” he said.
He also pleaded with the residents to afford them some time to recover and ensure that the outage was speedily fixed.
The recent two-week water outage was due to three power failures at the pump station, of which the first one was caused by lightning damage at City Power’s Eikenhof substation that supplies the station with electricity.
The station was then unable to pump water for a period of three days which resulted in the reservoir levels going down.
Subsequently, a power feed was also down which took about two days to fix.
The city promised to attend to the matter and resolve it.
kamogelo.moichela@iol.co.za
IOL