SINGAPORE: The central, northern and western parts of Singapore were hit by a major power blackout from 11.30pm Tuesday to 12.30am Wednesday.
Singapore Power (SP) said on Wednesday that the blackout was caused by a cable installation equipment fault at the Choa Chu Kang substation.
SP said the protection safety device was triggered which resulted in a total shutdown of sub station transformers.
Police received over 300 calls about the blackout but no major incident was reported. [They must've thought it's a terrorist attack. It's actually a good thing that they thought of it as a possible terrorist attack. It's not good to overlook such situations.]
Areas affected included parts of Bukit Timah Road, Choa Chu Kang, Woodlands,Clementi, Jalan Bahar, Jurong West, Bukit Batok and Marsiling.
Houses were in pitched darkness, traffic lights and street lamps were also down, and some roads were lit only by the headlights of passing cars.
At one of the condominiums in Bukit Timah, one resident struggled to find her way to the bottom level of her apartment to call me.
“In our apartment, there was one torch light, so it is not that bad. In the bottom level of the my apartment, there is a telephone. I can’t use the cordless phone; it is not working. It was total darkness and there’s no one except me on the bottom level, so it was very very bad!” said one resident, sounding all pissed and hopeless.
“I was kind of freaking out because I have to send Visual Basic .NET images to Pecilius. I told her I’ll do so.,” said the same, never sounding worse.
But power was being restored progressively.
At about 12:30am, the lights at HDB blocks along Choa Chu Kang Road were restored.
It was the same story for the other areas, with full power restored 30 minutes after midnight.
Thirty milliseconds after, her tone is restored too. She never sounded better.
Important: This blackout really did happen. However this post has been edited from the news posted at MediaCorp Channel News Asia website. To get the full and unedited edition, go here -Central, northern, western Singapore blacked out for an hour. Original article written by Yvonne Cheong and Derek Cher from MediaCorp Channel NewsAsia posted on their website on 14 April 2004 0649 hrs (GMT +8 hrs). This news article has been edited on purpose to fit someone’s situation.
Tags: singapore