Some 10,000 households in the Antwerp municipalities of Wilrijk and Antwerpen-Zuid have power due again after an outage due to a fire in a high-voltage cabin on Friday caused a shutdown in the area, grid operator Fluvius announced.
The incident left over 10,000 households in the region without power for quite some time, as well as police and fire stations, the University Hospital of Antwerp (UZA), the University of Antwerp and traffic lights and cameras on the A12, among others.
High-voltage grid operator Elia and Fluvius ensured that those priority customers got power back first, via a different route from the installation in Wilrijk. At around 4pm, the disruption was completely over. However, the damage to the high-voltage installation still has to be repaired.
It is unclear how the fire started, but it broke out in a high-voltage cabin in the Antwerp district of Wilrijk on Friday afternoon.
"The power outage also has a major impact on traffic," Wouter Bruyns of the local police told VRT during the outage. "Traffic lights are down and this can cause dangerous situations. We, therefore, ask people not to get on the road if it is not necessary."
Translation: "Parts of Wilrijk, Berchem and Hoboken have been affected by a power failure. Attention: traffic lights are not working in many places! There is no point in calling 112 or 101 because of a power failure. The problem will be solved as soon as possible."
