11.04.2008

Tower crane blacks out Manila

A tower crane on a construction site caused a major power outage in Manila this morning after it hit transmission lines belonging to the National Transmission Corporation (TransCo).

Transco said: “A construction crane hit a portion of TransCo's Sucat-Araneta line, causing the transmission line to trip. Subsequently, the Araneta-Balintawak transmission line followed suit”. A further series of line tripping then triggered an "automatic load dropping” at some of the city’s power plants.

The system started to recover after two hours but was due to take all morning before it was back to normal.

We were unable to confirm categorically how the crane managed to cause the damage, it seems that it was a simple collision. However some local reports claim that the crane fell onto the lines. There are no injuries reported so far from the construction site itself. The effect of the collision has though caused chaos with is likely to generate some substantial claims.

We will update when we have more information.
(We would appreciate any updates from local readers)