Really!!!

After everything that's happened,......,  my power shut down, then went into overdrive, my lights were bright enough for a concert! Then, without my sound system working, everything else was. Ok, a surge. Started it all up again. 2 mins later..... same thing happened. I thought a UFO was lighting my house.....

By the time I tried to get it going again, i saw flashing lights outside, oh god... there's been an accident. I went out to help someone (I thought someone had hit a pole in their car.) Only to find fire trucks everywhere.

The electrical junction box had just blown up! Judy my neighbour had called 000. They were here in about 4 mins. What good men. Thank you so much for comibg so quickly. They put the fire out. Waited for the electricians,  & now I am sitting by candlelight in near darkness for till about 6am.

I thought bad things came in 3's! Not 5's!

Crumbs, that was some power surge Tracy! You would have thought that the circuit breakers would have activated in the junction box before it got to the blowing-up stage, wouldn't you.

I hope you get your power back soon

You could be living in South Africa where we have our electricity shut down for 2-6 hours every second day to 'save'...

Power outages are a real nuisance. Hope everything's working smoothly now!

Theresa: I didn't know that!

Aww, Tracey, that must have been a real pain!

LyndaW wrote:Crumbs, that was some power surge Tracy!  You would have thought that the circuit breakers would have activated in the junction box before it got to the blowing-up stage, wouldn't you.

I hope you get your power back soon

The safety switch cut power to all our houses. They cut all power immediately to our houses. But the junction box was on fire in the street,

Shisa wrote:You could be living in South Africa where we have our electricity shut down for 2-6 hours every second day to 'save'...

Wow! It's never cut here to "save". We only have outages dues to equipment failure. I couldn't deal with that.

Caryll wrote:Aww, Tracey, that must have been a real pain!

Yeah! I spoke to the fireman... why are you using water on an electrical fire? If you notice I did not flood the fire with water, just lightly sprayed, removed, sprayed, removed.. yes I did notice. But why not use a foam?.... because they are also water based but heavier.

Apparently they put out the flames in a "small" electical fire, allow it to smolder till the elecs can disconnect the power.

No lights, no TV, no kettle, no oven, only one battery clock... but the solar lights worked so I knew when the electricians arrived at ? 1am? 

Yeah... google Load Shedding South Africa - it's a lot of bullcrap but I'd rather not go into it. Like hitting your head against a butchers knife while jumping barefoot in broken glass.
Eskom shut us down and then they go to court because they want to have a 3rd price increase this year. Giving yourself multi-million bonuses kind of drain the available funds.

Shisa wrote:You could be living in South Africa where we have our electricity shut down for 2-6 hours every second day to 'save'...

This was news to me too, Theresa. I suppose you can get used to anything and plan your days around it, like we did in the UK in the Winter of Discontent (the 3 Day Week). I suppose I was lucky then as I was young and adaptable, cooked on gas and had a open fire, and no children moaning about the telly being off. There was a run on, and a subsequent black market in, candles. It was surreal going round a supermarket lit by candles! But we knew it wasn't forever, and it wasn't.

I'll look up your suggested Google link in a minute or so.

You do adjust. Most big supermarkets have generators so they can stay open. I keep my laptop and phone charged so I can watch something or play a game. They shut different areas down at different times and we're down from 20:00 - 22:30 although it's usually a shorter time. The cities like Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town are sometimes down for up to 6 hours! Can you imaging peak time traffic and the electricity is down? No traffic lights! Nightmare!

So it's not just homes. The streets are also effected? Thats mad! Traffic lights out is asking for trouble.

LyndaW wrote:

Shisa wrote:You could be living in South Africa where we have our electricity shut down for 2-6 hours every second day to 'save'...

This was news to me too, Theresa.  I suppose you can get used to anything and plan your days around it, like we did in the UK in the Winter of Discontent (the 3 Day Week).  I suppose I was lucky then as I was young and adaptable, cooked on gas and had a open fire, and no children moaning about the telly being off.  There was a run on, and a subsequent black market in, candles.  It was surreal going round a supermarket lit by candles!  But we knew it wasn't forever, and it wasn't.

Yes, I remember that, Lynda. It WAS a pain, but actually we became quite philosophical about it! I remember answering the front door (usually to one of my sister's boyfriends who she didn't want to see!) with a torch or a candle. Quite surreal, really. We cooked electric, but made sure we had our meal before the 'lights went out'. Heating wasn't a problem (open fire) and neither was the tv - we had one, but it wasn't on much anyway.

People ended up paying silly amounts for candles, although I had a candle making kit which came in very handy!

tracyp wrote:So it's not just homes. The streets are also effected? Thats mad! Traffic lights out is asking for trouble.

It's a total blackout. A whole city is shut down, or big parts of the more rural areas.

Shisa wrote:

tracyp wrote:So it's not just homes. The streets are also effected? Thats mad! Traffic lights out is asking for trouble.

It's a total blackout. A whole city is shut down, or big parts of the more rural areas.

I take it essential services are kept going? Places like hospitals etc?

Yes, they have generators. It's still chaos and the criminals are having a party.