Homes and vehicles were swept away by the flooding in Jagersfontein on Sunday morning. PHOTO: Facebook/Paramedics, SAPS and Firefighters South Africa
Bulk of Jagersfontein electricity supply to be restored by Tuesday night – Eskom
Eskom said bulk electricity supply to Jagersfontein would be restored by midnight on Tuesday. The Free State town was hit by devastating flooding after a dam wall collapsed on Sunday.
Homes and vehicles were swept away by the flooding in Jagersfontein on Sunday morning. PHOTO: Facebook/Paramedics, SAPS and Firefighters South Africa
Eskom said its restoration efforts are on track and it should be able to return bulk electricity supply to Jagersfontein, Free State by midnight on Tuesday, 13 September.
ESKOM TO RESTORE ELECTRICITY TO JAGERSFONTEIN
A mining dam wall collapsed in Jagersfontein on Sunday and dozens of homes were flooded and destroyed. The Free State government confirmed that at least one person was killed in the accident – revising the initial death toll from three.
The Rietkuil Substation was also flooded with mud on Sunday, which affected the power supply to the area.
“A replacement transformer was delivered to Eskom’s Badplaas Substation this afternoon and is currently being installed to deliver bulk electricity supply to Centlec, the electricity distributor responsible for supplying power to Jagersfontein and Charlesville,” said Eskom on Tuesday.
The power supplier said any individual municipal customers that still do not have electricity supply after tonight should report the outage to their electricity service provider as the issue is likely to be the result of a localised fault.
People in the area are advised to treat all electrical lines, sockets and appliances as live and dangerous. Damaged or unsafe electrical installations must be reported to service providers.
President Cyril Ramaphosa visited Jagersfontein for a site inspection of the area on Monday and spoke with residents. Minister of Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, visited on Tuesday.
“We’re not here only for you to see us, but so I can see what happened and the work done by the premier, MEC, municipality, and other organisations that have been helping and to ensure that we will fix what happened to support you. We won’t abandon you,” said Ramaphosa.
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