Switch-on horror as fire ignites
THE emergency switch-on of stricken Komani went horribly wrong for the public works department when a suspected power spike set their offices on fire destroying everything in it.
The prefab offices were razed at 2am yesterday morning.
Komani has been without electricity for two days after two transformers blew in the Queendustria substation and Ebden Street substation, leaving the town in the dark.
Enoch Mgijima municipality appointed an East London contractor to fix the problem on Tuesday.
After the contractors, electricians and the municipality’s technical services department worked for two days on the transformers, electricity was finally restored to Komani areas starting from 9pm on Wednesday.
In a statement, the department of public works communication officer Vuyokazi Mbanjwa said one block of the department’s offices caught fire when the electricity was switched on.
“The burnt area was a prefab building which was used as an office. Everything in that building was burnt. All our computers, office equipment and the electrical equipment which was used to train artisans from a local school were burnt in the fire,” she said.
Mbanjwa said they were not precisely sure what caused the fire.
This would only be known when investigators had finished their work.
“However, there is a suspicion that the cause of the fire could be an electrical fault,” she said.
Police spokeswoman Captain Namhla Mdleleni said no case has been opened. —