How Cape Town’s weather is affecting Pinelands residents | News24

• Incelemt weather has causing power outages and flooding in Pineland.
• The strong winds have knocked down trees and affected power lines, leading to multiple outages.
• City officials are working to address the storm-related issues and encourage residents to report faults through various service channels.

The residents of Pinelands are also affected by the inclement weather Cape Town is currently experiencing. Thousands of trees, mostly Stone Pines are synonymous with the area, hence the name.

Ward councillor Riad Davids says Pinelands is called a leafy Suburb and most of these trees are close to end of life.

“In strong winds quite a few blow over, thankfully no one was injured or any house was damaged. Our electricity wires are all above ground and in strong winds the trees cause these wires to spark and we have multiple outages,” he says.

Flooding occurs at the five low points in Pinelands, eg Riverside, Links Drive and Union Avenue.

“If the Langa Pump Stations or the Athlone Waste Water Treatment Works cannot cope due to the ingress of stormwater into the system, then Pinelands is affected. Sewer spills will occur at these same low lying areas especially Days Walk and the Uitvlugt/Union intersections,” he says.

When the storm hit Cape Town three weeks ago, Mayco member for energy, Xanthea Limberg, visited affected areas where power lines were blow off and residents in Pinelands and Rondebosch experienced outages.

When addressing the residents in the affected areas Limberg mentioned the high call volumes being experienced and the City’s outage list which are provided to the public.

“The list is being updated as information is received from the teams on the ground. We encourage residents to report their faults to us via our service channels, including our new WhatsApp line, and to keep an eye on our social media channels for updates on the area outages,” she says.

Power keeps tripping

Limberg also added that City Energy teams fixes faults in areas as soon as possible. But often cannot switch customers back on because the power keeps tripping.

This is because of the large volumes of grid-connected inverters, and other power hungry appliances, coming on all at the same time – totally overloading the system, and causing it to trip.

Her advice is to unplug all grid-connected inverters, especially as they automatically connect to the municipal supply. This causes a surge when the power comes back on, then trips again and is off.

The City’s Electricity teams are attending to a number of storm-related faults around the City and the City apologises for any inconvenience caused. The strong winds and heavy rain showers may continue to lead to damaged electricity infrastructure which may result in a large number of electricity service requests. The City reminds residents that their teams will attend to service requests in the fastest time possible, if safe.

“A new WhatsApp number is available to log electricity service requests and storm damage. We ask residents to report their electricity faults to the City via our service channels to only use one reporting channel when reporting so that duplicate service requests are avoided as far as possible,” says Limberg.