Airport hit by power cuts as substation vandalised
Outages result in hassles for food court operations
THE East London Airport has been hit by intermittent power cuts since early Saturday morning after an electrical substation in Orange Grove informal settlement was vandalised.
The substation that supplies the airport’s main feed affected the food court mainly, as restaurants were unable to connect to backup generators.
The electricity supply was temporarily fixed on Wednesday and switched back on at around 8pm.
Buffalo City Metro spokesman Samkelo Ngwenya said the electricity outage at the airport was caused by vandalism and illegal connections from the Orange Grove squatter camp.
“This was a targeted vandalism, as the perpetrator dug up the cable which feeds the airport and surrounding areas and vandalised the cables.
“This illegal act affects consumers who are entitled to the electrical supply as legal, paying consumers, and while the people doing illegal connections or vandalising the electrical network can be prosecuted, this needs buy-in from legal consumers to provide witnesses and identification of the perpetrators,” he said.
Ngwenya said the BCM electricity department tried to resolve the engineering problems caused by the illegal act by raiding the area and removing illegal supplies and returning the network to safe working conditions regularly.
“The illegal act itself can only be resolved if all parties affected become involved and help the SAPS and BCMM to identify the perpetrators and assist in prosecutions.
“A temporary solution has been implemented at the power station as the vandalised equipment will need to be replaced.”
Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) spokeswoman Senzeni Ndebele said: “ACSA did have an interrupted power supply over the time period mentioned.
“I can confirm that the power supply is back to normal at the East London Airport.
“The airport did run a back-up generator in order to keep essential services running at the airport and ensure that our stakeholders are safe, our stakeholders being all who use the airport.
“We were able to approach the municipality for assistance as we have good relations with them and they did assist us.”
Ngwenya said to prevent such acts from happening, BCM had to rezone the informal settlements.
“We need to accelerate our plans to supply electricity to them but we believe that there could be a bigger picture at play here.”
She said although the assumption was that those vandalising the equipment were either trying to illegally connect electricity, or steal cables, it was also “highly likely” the vandals deliberately tried to cut power to penetrate the airport’s perimeter electric fence in order to break into and steal rental cars. —