By Jamal Adel.
Tripoli, 10 January 2014:
Local firefighters struggled to bring a blaze at Sebha West power station under control today, after . . .[restrict]it caught fire in the early hours of this morning.
“It is still burning now,” GECOL engineer, Hammed Al-Mabrouk told the Libya Herald. “Flames have engulfed a 63 Megawatt transformer and destroyed it completely.”
The cause of the fire, which broke out at around 2am, is not yet clear.
“It is hard to say whether the fire was deliberate or caused by a random bullet,” said the assistant manager of electrical networks at the station, Ghaith Ali.
The transformer had been badly burnt and a new one was needed urgently, he said. “These types of transformers may not be available in the South, so how quickly we can get the station running again depends on when GECOL send us a replacement,” he added.
The power station supplied some 80 percent of Sebha’s electricity needs, Mabrouk said, meaning that much of the town was left without power this morning.
“We have now started distributing loads from other local power stations to make sure most of the town continues to have electricity,” said Ali. However, Sebha residents are expected to experience rolling power cuts until the station receives a new transformer. [/restrict]
