Yeoju power outage, restored in an hour and a half… Inconvenience of traffic and communication obstacles

Today (9th), there was a power outage in most of Yeoju-si, Gyeonggi-do for an hour and a half, causing inconvenience to residents.

According to the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), a power outage occurred in 9 eup, myeon, and dong, excluding Ganam-eup, Daishin-myeon, and Sanbuk-myeon, out of 12 eup-myeon-dongs in Yeoju from around 10:26 am today.

As a result, it was tentatively estimated that 52,800 households were affected.

KEPCO resumed power supply at 11:59 a.m., which took about an hour and a half, after confirming that there was an abnormality in the power equipment of a substation in Yeoju, and restoring it.

However, it is known that in some apartments, power supply is still not smooth due to an error in their power supply facilities due to a power outage.

The sudden, large-scale power outage caused great inconvenience to the citizens.

Most of the traffic lights were turned off, and police officers were urgently dispatched to the main intersection to clear traffic with hand signals.

However, the range of the blackout was so wide that at most intersections, cars continued to operate without traffic control.

At around 11:05 am, at the E-Mart intersection in Yeoju, a collision between a car and an SUV occurred with the traffic signal turned off, causing congestion in the area.

There were also reports that mobile phones and landline telephones such as government offices had stopped working.

Immediately after the power outage, Yeoju City Hall informed residents of the relevant facts through SNS and operated an emergency generator to continue civil complaints.

A total of 11 elevator trapping accidents were reported in Yeoju.

At 11:10 a.m. in Hadong, a report was received that the automatic door of the villa did not open, so firefighters were dispatched to open it.

No blackout damage was confirmed in neighboring areas such as Icheon and Yangpyeong.

A KEPCO official said, "The power supply was resumed by replacing the substation facilities, but more analysis is needed to determine the exact cause of the blackout."

(Photo=provided by Yeoju City Hall, Yonhap News)