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•How fire razed Dan-Agundi transmission station
From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
• Staff of TCN receiving Kano State Commissioner of Police, Muhd Usaini Gumel during a visit to the fire site
Just as Muslims in Kano State were about to commence the holy month of Ramadan, a huge fire incident broke out at the Dan-Agundi transmission station in the metropolis.
This led to instant blackouts in Zaria Road, Gandu Albasa among others. It also sparked off fear of a prolong power outage.
Daily Sun investigation indicated that although no life was lost, the inferno destroyed facilities worth millions of naira as it razed down two M60 transformers, a big crane, electrical wires and other valuable items at the TCN section of the station. By the time it was put off, a dark shred of burnt items spoke a lot about the losses.
Head, TCN, Kano, Basher Mohammed Gote lamented: “We have two transformers affected by the fire- a two by 60 transformer. We have the highest, middle and low voltage categories. The affected ones are in the middle voltage category.
“There is also the big crane. That crane you cannot get it for N50 million and that too was razed down by the fire. That is apart from other small electrical items like the wires of the transformers, which we have not yet quantified. The damage was huge. We pray God that it would never happen again.
“We cannot say it is sabotage and we cannot say it is purely natural. It could have been as a result of human error. That is our nearest guess for now as investigation into the cause of the fire is on- going
“Anything that is handled by a human being cannot be totally without error. But actually, we never anticipated it. We have never had such an incident in the past. We pray that we should never experience it again.
“The staff were working as at the time of the eruption. They used to work with the same equipment. So they are very familiar with it and they have just drained the oil and they wanted to bring it back.
“We have some leakages from the transformer on that day and the oil was being drained. We had finished the draining and we now wanted to couple it back and we were just about to fill the oil back when we heard an explosion from the generator.
“Maybe, because of the fact that the temperature was very high on that day. Maybe, it was because of the heat. The day before the fire, we had temperature running up to 46 degree. That is what happened.
“So, there was a bust. And the oil that spilled around the floor started catching fire. When the fire erupted, it extended to the crane and the transformer.
“Ordinarily, it was only the crane and the transformer that could have been damaged or burnt. But because of the natural breeze, it blew the fire out and the fire spread to the other transformer. And the other transformer came down totally because it was working at the time of the fire.”
On the possibility of installing a new transformer, he said they would rather make do with what was left for now: “What we have in the station would be able to manage the power situation to feeders in the area.
“It is not about installing new ones. It is how to manage what we have now on the ground. The station here takes about 180-load capacity. We have two transformers that are out but we still have a transformer that can take up 60 load.
“In addition, we have a redundant 100 KVA transformer that had not been commissioned. It is a new one. It was scheduled for commission in the next one or two weeks. But because of this fire, we have to call Abuja and hurry up the process of commissioning.
“One thing you need to understand is that we didn’t lose any load. On that day of the fire incident, by 10.00 pm, we had already restored supply to three of the feeders here. By the following day, before 10.00 am we had connected the remaining four feeders. All the feeders that are here are working.
“The truth is that the allocation to this particular station is between 30 and 40. This transformer can comfortably handle 48 capacity. There is no cause for alarm.”
