Power down in five villages after fire damages equipment

A fire at an electricity distribution centre in Ħal Far early on Saturday morning left thousands of households without a constant flow of electricity for nearly two days in the south of the island.

Żurrieq, Safi, Kirkop, Mqabba and Ħal Far suffered power cuts following a fire in the distribution centre which damaged an 11 KV switch­gear that feeds the affected areas.

Power started being restored at 6 p.m. yesterday.

For a while, the load was shifted onto different sources to bypass the damaged equipment but the solution was short-lived and the power was out again in these villages and parts of Marsa.

Some residents in the affected areas were left with no power between Saturday night and Sunday morning, while others woke up to find no electricity.

In Kirkop and Safi they had been without electricity since around 7 p.m. on Saturday.

Enemalta said the faults were not tied in any way to an overload.

Sunday Mass at St Catherine’s parish church in Żurrieq was accompanied by the humming of generators. The Lidl supermarket in Safi also got a huge generator to save the contents of its refrigerators from going to waste, while the breeze mitigated the absence of air conditioners and fans.

“It’s hot everywhere, we’ve no fridge, no freezer, no television,” said Carmel Cefai, a Kirkop resident, yesterday. “This is too much; it has been going on for two days. On Good Friday at least they managed to fix it.”

The problem, however, went beyond the obvious appliance and cooling issues. Residents in Nigret, an area on an elevation in Żurrieq, had no water supply as the pumps at the reservoir tower, necessary for the area to have mains water, were not operating.

“First the electricity went, and now we have no water,” Tony Cardona, a Nigret resident said.

A spokesman for the Water Services Corporation said the corporation had its hands tied, as the pumps required a huge amount of electricity to operate.

Meanwhile, some mobile phone users in the affected areas were also left with little or no reception at all as the repeaters covering the area had used up the charge of their batteries.

“I would like to know where I can claim damages from,” Mr Cardona said.

Enemalta said the power cuts affected Żurrieq, Ħal Far, Kirkop, Safi and Mqabba. However, The Times also received reports that some Qrendi residents were affected for an hour.

The corporation said its technicians were on site to fix the faults and it was building a temporary high voltage switchgear panel to restore supply and replace the switchgear damaged by the fire.