Power outage resulted from Short circuit at Juja substation

By Cyrus Ombati

A number of major urban centres around the country were on Saturday night thrown into darkness following a power blackout.

The blackout, which started at around 9.45pm went on until about Sunday 1am in the affected areas. But other places had not received normal power supply by Sunday afternoon.

This affected many businesses in the affected areas, which depend on power. Homesteads were either not spared as callers said food was going bad in their freezers.

Kenya Power spokesman Migwi Theuri attributed the blackout to a short circuit on a high voltage line at the Juja substation in Nairobi.

"A short circuit on a major supply line at the Juja substation in Nairobi caused supply interruption that affected parts of Nairobi this evening," read part of a statement sent from the firm.

The statement added the Mt. Kenya Region, the West Region and most parts of the Rift Valley were not affected by the outage.

The station is one of the major sources of power supply to the city and its environs.

The engineers were working to restore supply, he said, and added that the process was gradual.

A spot check around the country established that there was no electricity in major towns including Nairobi, Kisumu, Kakamega, Mombasa, Meru, Kisii, Eldoret, Thika, Nyamira, and Kericho.

Police said no major or extraordinary incident was reported in the period.

However, police were mobilized and told to be on alert.

Their operations were affected as they rely on power to ensure their operations are on their communication channels.

They resorted to batteries and mobile phones in co-ordinating the work.

"There was nothing unique that happened that we can attribute to the power outage. We were out there monitoring the security situation especially in the city," said Nairobi Area deputy PPO Moses Ombati.