‘Failure’ behind embarrassing Gabba blackout revealed
Gabba officials have revealed exactly what happened when the stadium plunged into darkness during Friday night’s clash between the Lions and Demons.
QLD News
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A failure involving an underground cable joint has been blamed for the lights going out at the Gabba during Friday night’s AFL clash between the Lions and the Demons.
Energex crews were working to repair the cable on Saturday as the state government pointed to the outage as another reason why the Gabba needed to be redeveloped.
The AFL game was plunged into darkness when the lights suddenly went out, sparking bizarre scenes amid the crowd of 30,047 spectators – before the power was soon restored, ensuring all but one of the light towers turned back on.
The Gabba’s general manager Mark Zundans said the venue had “robust” emergency management plans in place to deal with outages.
“All our emergency systems kicked in,” he said.
“So there was lighting. There was still adequate supply of water. Our staff were briefed so that they knew exactly where to send patrons if we intended to evacuate the venue.”
Area manager for Energex, Kevin Lavender, said the outage was caused by a failure of an underground cable joint.
“Part of our infrastructure includes underground cables,” he said.
“The cable failed basically in service. In this instance, this cable supplied 87 customers – and two of those customers were basically the Gabba Stadium.”
Mr Lavender said there were “multiple reasons” why the joint may have failed as he pointed out the infrastructure in the Gabba precinct was aged.
Crews were still investigating the failure on Saturday.
“From my perspective, I think it’s important that we acknowledge if there is an upgrade to the Gabba, some of our network will probably be taken into account with that and we will be part of that project,” he said.
Mr Lavender said all supply points to the Gabba had at least one backup supply – with the supply restored in a staged approach.
On social media, Deputy Premier Steven Miles pointed to the outage as a reason why the Gabba needed to be redeveloped.
The state government has committed $2.7bn towards rebuilding the venue ahead of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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