Enel reported this Tuesday (19) that the blackout that hit the central region of the city of São Paulo for around 24 hours, since last Monday (18), was caused by work by the Basic Sanitation Company of São Paulo. State of São Paulo (Sabesp).
According to Enel, during an excavation carried out by Sabesp in the central region, the underground electrical wiring was accidentally hit, causing a supply interruption at around 10:30 am yesterday.
“Immediately, the company sent teams of technicians and electricians to the site to identify the cause and carry out network repairs,” stated the energy distributor. “Due to the characteristics involving the underground network that serves that region, the distributor’s teams worked in partnership with Sabesp throughout the afternoon,” added Enel.
Sabesp, in turn, said that, as soon as it learned of the problem, “it immediately mobilized teams to the location that did not identify any relationship between Sabesp's work and the incident”.
“Before starting the work, as is customary, Sabesp carried out a survey of all the networks that pass through the site. For this reason, the excavation at the site was done manually, starting at 11 am, without moving the wiring,” added the water company. “Sabesp remains in contact and made itself available to Enel to help identify the real cause of the problem”, added the company.
Reinstatement
At around 10am today, the electricity supply was restored to Santa Casa de Misericórdia and Santa Isabel hospital. During the period in which the central region was affected by the blackout, hospitals had to run on generators.
During the morning, Enel reported that “it restored power to 85% of affected customers in the neighborhoods of Higienópolis, Bela Vista, Cerqueira César, Santa Cecília and Vila Buarque”.
(Published by Fábio Mathias. With information from Carolina Figueiredo)
Source: CNN Brasil

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