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Senior officials at the City of Johannesburg have made a U-turn on the cause of the Joburg CBD explosion, saying the cause was “inconclusive”.
Last week, Joburg City Manager Floyd Brink said the cause of the explosion was “definitely a gas leak”, but on Wednesday, he doubled down, saying results were “still inconclusive on the cause of the explosion and what may have ignited the gas or the source of the gas in the underground tunnels”.
Brink made the comments on Wednesday during a technical media briefing where officials gave a seven-day outlook report after the explosion.
Officials have been using advanced hi-tech to inspect tunnels underground, and as of Wednesday, they had restored water, sanitation, and electricity services in the inner city.
Brink said work was continuing as the city looks to resurface the road and repair underground tunnels, but new standards would be introduced as lessons had been learnt from the explosion.
“We continue to receive regular updates from the experts on site and are concurrently pushing to restore services and to prepare for the rehabilitation work of the road and underground tunnels,” Brink said.
“We are now beginning our planning for the rehabilitation and repair work of the road surface and underground service tunnels in Bree Street (Lilian Ngoyi Street),” he said.
“We have established a team of engineers from the various entities of the city to begin planning and scoping of the work we will need to undertake.”
Brink said the new standards that had to be met included taking stricter safety measures pertaining to how the city managed it’s underground service lines and connections.
“Amongst the anomalies currently, we have gas pipelines running parallel to water lines,” he said.
“This is not ideal and as we prepare to restore Bree Street, our work will seek to set the standard of what should be the most suited, safe and appropriate layout of services infrastructure in a city like ours.”
The city has begun the process to declare the explosion a local state of disaster.
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