City Power blames vandalism for brief power outage at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital

JOHANNESBURG - City Power has pointed to vandalism as the cause of a power outage at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital on Tuesday.

The interruption affected vital services at the facility for over an hour after two backup generators failed to kick in.

The utility has since outlined that its Soweto substation was earlier damaged after criminals attempted to steal cables. 
 
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena: "We have the team on site busy with repairs. Unfortunately, the work will take most of the day and they will only finish later this evening. We do not have an exact time of when."

Meanwhile, the provincial health department has attributed the hour of darkness to a gap between the power outage and generators coming on.  
 
Department spokesperson Motalatale Modiba: "What was the issue is that because it is such a big facility, the backup generators were down at that time, so I am not sure where people get that thing that the hospital was without power."

Services continue uninterrupted at the hospital.