The fire underneath Joburg’s M1 highway caused by cable theft, which has led to several suburbs being plunged into darkness, is “a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions” that could take weeks to be repaired.
In a letter addressed to national police commissioner Lt-Gen Fannie Masemola, seen by the Sunday Times, City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava has appealed to him to bring in the army to stop the theft and vandalism crippling the city’s power-supply infrastructure.
The fire started underground on Tuesday night near Smit Street and the double-decker section of the M1 highway between the Braamfontein and Fordsburg substations. City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the cause of the blaze was the attempted theft of electricity equipment.
A preliminary assessment of the situation had found that “criminal elements had targeted the copper cable running on the M1 double-decker feeding the Braamfontein area”, which had caught fire while criminals were trying to cut it.
According to Mangena, the situation was complicated because the fire had affected not just a single copper cable. He said 10 cables had been damaged — multiple 88kV cables, several 11kV cables, a gas line, and one oil — filled cable.
“The problem with a cut in the oil cable is that it causes leaks, and that oil is flammable, so that is why you saw so much black smoke billowing everywhere,” Mangena said.
The fire caused an in-rush air current that tripped the Fordsburg bulk intake substation, resulting in an outage affecting Braamfontein, Parkview, Parktown, Melville, Amalgam and Vrededorp.
The incident also threatened the open gas turbine substation City Power launched just last month, and on which R100m had been spent to refurbish it, Mashava said.
In her appeal to Masemola, Mashava explained that cable theft and vandalism were “escalating unabatedly” in Johannesburg and were threatening to destabilise the city’s power supply completely.
“Theft and vandalism of our infrastructure for the current financial year to date has cost City Power R160,475,253,” she said.
She added that, while the latest incident of attempted cable theft was a crime, no police officials had arrived on the scene to investigate or secure the site, and that City Power’s own security teams had to deal with the conflict.
The city is calling on the government to intervene and help us deal with this vandalism and theft, especially when it relates to the zama-zama operations within the city
— Floyd Brink, Joburg city manager
After catching thieves — who live in informal shacks under the Carr Street interchange — trying to steal cables that had been cut and burnt in the fire, the City Power security team was involved in a shoot-out with them.
The city said that, while there had been no injuries, police also had not responded to the incident.
“About 600kg of copper was confiscated from under the bridge, where recyclers have set up makeshift shacks. We have since requested assistance from [the police], who did not respond,” said Mashava.
According to Mangena, the Joburg Roads Agency has declared the damaged area “structurally sound”, while Joburg Emergency Management Services has declared the zone safe to enter.
“We are on site with the teams ready to start work. We are cleared to go. There is nothing wrong with the bridge and we have experts out to check the gas lines in the tunnels to do preliminary assessments of the air quality,” Mangena said.
“Spillage is another risk, so there will have to be an oil cleanup too. We will then open up the tunnels and flush clean air through [them] to get rid of all the fumes.”
“In all my seven-and-a-half years as a city councillor, I have never witnessed a disaster of this magnitude. It’s the worst thing that could possibly happen,” said activist Bridget Steer, whose constituency includes several suburbs affected by the huge power outages caused by the fire.
“Because the repairs are going to take such a long time to complete, in the meantime they are trying to back feed off other lines. In Parktown, they are looking to areas such as Mayfair and Hurst Hill.”
City Power is exploring several options to restore power to areas in Braamfontein, parts of the CBD, Newtown and Parktown by back-feeding electricity through the Fort and Bree substations.
Electricity has been restored to the Metro Centre, the Liberty Life Centre, Braampark and various office buildings in the Braamfontein area. This meant the State of the City Address could go ahead in council chambers on Thursday, followed by the State of the City debate on Friday.
The situation remains desperate, with the full extent of the damage not yet known, the cost of repairs uncertain and security risks continuing.
“We implore your assistance in deploying sustained police resources to curb these crimes. We further request that you propose to the justice, crime prevention and security cluster [that it] consider deployment of the South African National Defence Force to assist in stabilising the situation,” Mashava asked Masemola.
Joburg city manager Floyd Brink said the underground fire had nothing to do with the recent Bree Street underground explosion.
“We have established that there was some level of vandalism that took place in the area. It’s becoming a huge challenge for the city, affecting most of its entities ... The city is calling on the government to intervene and help us deal with this vandalism and theft, especially when it relates to the zama-zama operations within the city,” he said.
Police spokesperson Brig Athlende Mathe confirmed the national police commissioner had received correspondence from City Power. She said he had directed Gauteng police commissioner Lt-Gen Tommy Mthombeni to intervene by getting the Johannesburg economic infrastructure task team to work with City Power security to devise a joint plan to address the issue.
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