News Release For immediate Release
Criminals identified as major cause of power interruptions
Thursday, September 2, 2010: ELECTRICITY connections have been ruled out as a cause of the Kisekka Market Fire earlier this week.
Investigations by Umeme engineers have determined that the fire, which occurred in the early morning of Monday, August 30, had no links to the power connections in the market area.
“We were initially worried that there may have been a link to illegal power connections, since we found evidence of looping from some shops. Illegal connections increase the risk of such incidences, which is why we must work hard to discourage them,” said Charlotte Kemigyisha, Umeme Corporate Communications Manager.
Following a report of the fire outbreak at about 0710hrs on Monday, Umeme switched off power supply to Kisekka Market at 0715hrs, and had a technical team on site within fifteen minutes.
Kiseka market shops burning
The team, led by Technical Officer Mathias Mulimira, isolated the Kisekka Market transformer and restored electricity to the surrounding areas.
“We did a final assessment of the Umeme network on Tuesday and found that the overhead Low Voltage network was not affected by fire, and that the shops on the block that got burnt did not have meters of their own. Many of them were being supplied by looping from the neighboring shops on different blocks which did not get burnt,” Kemigyisha added.
She said the investigation report concluded that the primary cause of the fire was not due to electricity because of the condition of the meters, the circuit breaker, and the load wires where the burnt shops were looping power from.
“The fact that electricity supply was restored to the whole network in the Market without any repairs being done also confirms that it did not have any anomaly before and after the fire out-break,” Kemigyisha said.
Ends….By Media Analyst
For inquiries contact:
Charlotte Kemigyisha
Corporate Communications Manager
Umeme Limited
0772 22 22 00