Sub-Station Explodes

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31307, 1 March 1967, Page 1

Sub-Station Explodes

(from Our Own Reporter?

TIMARU, February 28. An explosion ripped the heart out of the Municipal Electricity Department’s transformer sub-station beneath the footpath in Bank street at 930 a.m. today

The blast shattered the segmented protective covering of 27 4ft by 3ft concrete slabs 4in thick for the length of the 30ft by 9ft layer.

Mr W. J. A. Wood, a storeman at John Edmond, Ltd., who was standing in the doorway of the top store, felt the blast from the explosion. “There was a loud thump, and the whole footpath erupted. There was a mass of flame, and smouldering timber and a lot of smoke for quite a while after the explosion,” said Mr Wood. He saw a 2ft square steel trapdoor land on the mudguard of a new Jaguar car. There was no-one on the footpath at the time of the devastating explosion. The city electrical engineer (Mr A. J. Sleight) said the explosion caused a lot of damage. The extent or cause was not yet known. All consumers in the Elizabeth and Bank streets area, and north of Stafford street, were without power for up to an hour. The car, owned by Mr A. Segar, of 19 Angland avenue, which had only done 565 miles, and which Mr Segar has not yet seen, was parked

behind the transformer substation. A hole was punched in the mudguard.