20,000 Hong Kong households face 2-day blackout after cable fire triggers power outages, class suspensions and disruptions to hospital and rail services
- Tuesday night’s blaze centred on cable bridge along Kwong Yip Street, no injuries reported; government demands report on incident from electricity supplier CLP Power
- Classes at 14 schools in Tin Shui Wai suspended on Wednesday morning because of power cut
About 20,000 households in Hong Kong will be left without power for two days after a fire from high-voltage cables in Yuen Long triggered outages, caused railway operations to be suspended, disrupted hospital services across three districts, and resulted in classes at 14 schools being put on hold.
Hours after the fire that started at around 7pm on Tuesday night, CLP Power, one of two Hong Kong electricity companies, said its supply for 140,000 households had gradually resumed, but it needed two days to complete repairs for another 20,000 households in Tin Shui Wai.
On Wednesday morning, classes at 14 schools in Tin Shui Wai, covering kindergarten children, as well as primary and secondary pupils, were suspended because of the power cut. The Education Bureau appealed to schools to make flexible arrangements for students who had already arrived on campus.
In a statement at 01.49am on Wednesday, the government said it was “very concerned” about the outage and had activated its emergency monitoring and support centre to work with relevant departments to maintain law and order, as well as medical and other emergency services, and help residents in need.
It said the government would ask CLP Power to investigate the incident and submit a report to prevent similar incidents from happening again.