It has been a week since the City of Johannesburg was rocked by an underground gas explosion on Lilian Ngoyi Street (formerly Bree Street).
On Wednesday, city manager Floyd Brink implored the public to be patient as the municipality works around the clock to normalise the situation.
Brink said the city has compiled a report in order to commence with necessary legislated processes to declare the explosion a local state of disaster.
“The declaration of the disaster is critical in order to allow us to assess the impact of the explosion on infrastructure,” said Brink.
“At this stage, we remain confident that we are on the right path in our efforts to respond and recover from the incident.
“We once more implore the public to bear with us and give us space to do all we must for the successful recovery of the site and services.”
Brink said he is pleased to inform the residents that with this particular incident, the city’s systems have worked successfully.
“We have also identified gaps where they may exist and as part of the lessons learnt, several processes will be reviewed to assist us improve our offering for any future occurrences.”
Even though the cause of the explosion has not been established, he commended members of the emergency management services, Johannesburg Metro Police Department, SA Police Service, engineers and experts who dedicated their time to make sure the area was attended to.
He added that the city has received updates from experts who are pushing to restore services, and to prepare for rehabilitation work of the road and underground tunnels.
“We are now beginning our planning for the rehabilitation and repair work of the road surface and underground service tunnels on Lilian Ngoyi Street.
“It is evident to us that in rehabilitating the road surface and underground tunnels, we will have to implement new standards on how we manage and lay out underground service lines and connections.”
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