Cairns power outage caused by Esplanade underground cable failure

North Queensland’s electricity retailer explained what caused the Cairns City blackout on Saturday evening, as another 4000-odd customers go without power on Sunday in separate incidents.

Cairns City went dark for two hours on Saturday, January 18 as underground cable on the Esplanade caused a power outage to more than 4700 customers. Corner of Sheridan St and Shields St.

North Queensland’s electricity retailer has explained what caused the Cairns City blackout on Saturday evening, in what was an uncommon, but not unusual occurence with energy infrastructure on a steamy night.

Cairns City night-life came to sudden halt about 8.20pm on Saturday as an underground cable fault along the Esplanade tripped the network’s protection equipment, causing the lights to go out for 4786 customers including restaurants, bars and hotels across the CBD.

An Ergon Energy spokesman said the underground cable fault was not the result of a public incident, “such as when a vehicle strikes a pole,” rather an uncommon but not unusual breakdown of the line.

Cairns City went dark for two hours on Saturday, January 18 as underground cable on the Esplanade caused a power outage to more than 4700 customers. Corner of Sheridan St and Shields St.

The spokesman said power was gradually restored to all affected customers by 10.26pm.

He also ruled out high network demand as a reason for the failure, as the Australian Energy Market Operator data dashboard showed Queensland’s scheduled demand was about 7521MW while the state was generating about 6946MW at the time.

Meanwhile, on Sunday a further 4000-odd customers were impacted in separate incidents at Holloways Beach, and in the Brinsmead, Kanimbla and Manoora area.

From 1.18pm 1169 Holloways Beach Ergon customers were without power with the impact attributed to a “loss of supply due to public safety concerns.”

And at Brinsmead, Kanimbla, and parts of Manoora, Manunda, Whitfield and Redlynch 3237 customers were impacted from 1.32pm due to damage requiring emergency repairs.

The blackout led to eerie scenes across the city with popular areas including The Pier precinct and the Esplanade Dining Precinct impacted, as hundreds of city dwellers collectively filed out of the CBD.

Diners choosing to stay out could be seen resorting to mobile phone lights to finish their meals.

At Cairns Performing Arts Centre, the stage was set for Cairns Choral Society's final performance of Come From Away – a musical inspired by the events of September 11, which had kicked off on January 10.

Cairns City went dark for two hours on Saturday, January 18 as underground cable on the Esplanade caused a power outage to more than 4700 customers. Sheridan St, looking north.

Local tourism expert Nikki Giumelli and her partner Patrick McLoughlin were fixated on what they described as “a great performance” when the stage went dark about halfway through, before the emergency lights switched on.

“We hung around for about half and hour hoping it would come back on and chatting in the foyer, but it didn’t and they told us they would work something out for us.” Ms Giumelli said.

“We felt for the cast, it was their final performance, all that hard work, but the whole thing was really well managed by the staff.”

Outside, Ms Giumelli said she could not recall when she last saw a pitch black cityscape.

“It was a very eerie feeling, quite a few traffic lights were out too, but it seemed calm – I think that’s just the relaxed North Queensland way.”

For residents and hotel visitors without back-up power, humid conditions at the time meant two hours without airconditioning as 85 per cent relative humidity caused it to feel like 35.9C, at 8.30pm.

Originally published as Cairns power outage caused by Esplanade underground cable failure