City teams are attending to severe power infrastructure damage and area outages across the metro, including Wynberg, where strong winds that many likened to a tornado, hit, swooping off roofs and damaging overhead electrical lines, on Wednesday evening around 11pm.

According to Xanthea Limberg, the City of Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for energy, the severe weather conditions have caused widespread damage to the city’s electricity infrastructure. “Our teams are working around the clock to attend to hundreds of service requests, including over 22 area faults. All our teams and contractors remain on high alert.”

The impacted areas include Grassy Park, Philippi, Eagle Park, Plumstead, Steenberg, and many other areas.

The aggressive wind affected four houses on the corner of Sussex and Bute roads, and crews from Constantia responded to the incident, according to Sonica Lategan, of Disaster Risk Management. “Only the South African Weather Service can confirm whether this was a tornado.

“The Disaster Management Centre can confirm that the City’s Fire and Rescue Service received an emergency call at approximately 11.20pm, of roofs blown off in Wynberg, and damage to overhead electrical wires.”

Ms Lategan said: “The occupants of the properties relocated to alternative accommodation. Fire Services staff remained on site until the wind died down at approximately 4,30am, to ensure there were no further impacts.

“Further investigations and assessments will be undertaken by the Disaster Risk Management Centre,” said Ms Lategan.

Ms Limberg and senior energy officials visited Wynberg where electricity teams urgently attended to weather-damaged infrastructure.

City teams have been working around the clock to attend to all electricity service requests in the metro. Delayed repair times may be experienced due to the safety conditions required for electrical work and high call volumes.

Ms Limberg said: “City Energy teams fix faults in areas as soon as possible but often cannot switch customers back on because the power keeps tripping.

“This is because of the large volumes of grid-connected inverters, and other power hungry appliances, coming on all at the same time – totally overloading the system, and causing it to trip.”

Residents are urged to follow these safety tips:

• Unplug all grid-connected inverters especially. They automatically connect to the municipal supply. This causes a surge when the power comes back on. Then it trips again, and is off.

• Switch off to switch back on.

• Disconnect connected inverters (and switch off power hungry equipment such as geysers and heaters) to prevent tripping, so that power can be restored.

Note: The City’s area outages list is being updated as information is received from the Electricity teams. If an area is not included, it does not mean teams are not aware of the matter.

Report electricity services and damage: (only log on one channel):

WhatsApp: 060 018 1505

Call Centre: 0860 103 089

SMS: 31220 (Free SMSes do not apply)

Email: power@capetown.gov.za

eServices: www.capetown.gov.za/servicerequests

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