MAJOR power cuts caused by separate problems hit the capital Nicosia, Limassol and other areas yesterday causing chaos on the roads for hours, and keeping police and fire services busy.
No injuries or damage were reported despite dozens of calls for help from people trapped in lifts.
No sooner were things getting back to normal in Nicosia after a fault at the Athalassa station caused a two-hour outage, when lightning struck a turbine at the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) main power plant at Vassilikos, plunging most residential areas of Limassol and several other areas islandwide – including parts of Nicosia for a second time – into near darkness at 4.30pm. Supply began to be gradually restored to affected areas from 5pm onwards, the EAC said.
“Lightning struck the Vassilikos power station,” said acting EAC spokesman Yiannis Tsouloftas. Back-up systems were put into service to aid efforts to restore full power. “It’s been a very difficult day for the EAC,” he said.
The earlier power cut in Nicosia, which outed half the district between 11.18am and 12.42pm, caused traffic chaos in the capital and left local businesses and banks unable to operate for over an hour and a half.
“Equipment failure was the cause of the blackout,” Tsouloftas said.
The fault occurred between the Athalassa and Alambra sub-stations on the ‘overearth’ transmission lines. Despite early reports, there was no damage to Dhekelia or Vassilikos from the Nicosia outage, Tsouloftas said. He went on to explain that the blackout was not caused by any inadequacy of electricity production capabilities nor was human error to blame.
Initial reports claimed that the emergency generators at the General Hospital had failed causing several operations to be cancelled. Chief of the General Hospital Andreas Matsas moved quickly to deny the reports.
Speaking to Radio Trito, Matsas told reporters that somewhere between 10 and 12 operations had been rescheduled for tomorrow to avoid any complications but there were no problems caused by the blackout, he said.
Police and the fire service were called in to make sure that traffic jams were kept to a minimum and to rescue people from elevators.
Chief of traffic Demetris Demetriou said police officers were immediately dispatched to main junctions to ease congestion. Demetriou reported that there had been some minor accidents but nothing unusual and urged those on the road to be extra careful.
“The fire services received over 60 calls from people trapped in elevators,” spokeswoman Liza Kemidji told the Mail. Elevator company employees also assisted firemen with the operation as everyone trapped was rescued unharmed reported Kemidji. She said later in the day that they had received a further five calls for help in Limassol when the power went out there.
Businesses, large superstores, restaurants and cafes in Nicosia all ground to a standstill during the blackout.
Police sent out four plainclothes officers to keep an eye on shops in Ledra Street and ancillary roads. One uniformed officer was stationed outside the Bank of Cyprus at Eleftheria Square to discourage any possible thieves.
“Not all of the branches of Bank of Cyprus were affected as our branch at Phaneromeni has a back-up generator,” Bank of Cyprus operations manager Demetris Antoniou said.
Local jeweller Nikos Ioannou was more philosophical having been around since 1945. “We know all of our neighbours and so we’re not worried that anyone might want to steal from us,” he said.
Others were not as calm and collected, with popular cafes and restaurants eager for power to be restored. One café on Ledra Street was still able to serve customers frappe although they were only able to make them in shakers.
Il Forno, one of the most popular restaurants in the old town, was severely affected. “We can’t work right now and we hope power is restored before the food in our freezers goes off,” chef Sebastian Petrakides said. The restaurant had installed an emergency generator in light of the explosion at the Mari naval base last year, which destroyed the Vassilikos station. However the restaurant’s back-up plan had failed as the generator refused to work during yesterday’s outage.
Just off Ledra Street an internet café lost its customers immediately the power was cut. The owner said he was unable to charge his customers correctly as all records were stored on his computer. “Having no power is a big problem as all of my business goes through computers,” the 24 year old added.
People were further inconvenienced by a temporary loss of mobile network coverage during the blackout.
Cyprus Mail