Sabotage ruled out in ‘MassKara blackout’

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – A top official of the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco) ruled out insinuations that the blackout that occurred early morning of Oct 15, 2022 was meant to sabotage the ongoing MassKara festival.

Engr. Jose Taniongon, manager of the Unified Engineering Department, told Daily Guardian here that this speculation is “preposterous.”

Taniongon said he found it absurd that they will sabotage their own facilities and then fix them.

“Sabotahi-on namun dason kami man makay-o?” Taniongon lamented.

He said Ceneco incurred P700,000 in damaged facilities because of the incident that occurred while festival-goers were celebrating in the downtown area.

Taniongon said there is no reason why they would sabotage the festivities.

The incident resulted in a blackout in the entire city that lasted for more than three hours in some areas.

Netizens turned to social media blaming Ceneco for the incident alleging it sabotaged the ongoing MassKara festivities.

Taniongon said power supply was fully restored in affected areas.

Earlier, Ceneco president of the board Jojit Yap also denied the “sabotage speculation.”

In a press statement Friday, Ceneco explained the cause of unscheduled power interruptions experienced by Member-Consumer-Owners connected to Reclamation Substation a week ago.

Acting Ceneco general manager Erbin Stan Leo Ticar said Ceneco’s Reclamation Feeder 5 (RF5) located in Reclamation Area, Bacolod City, experienced a distribution line insulator breakdown around 12:57 a.m. on Oct 15.

He added that for some unidentified causes, the automatic tripping mechanism of the RF5 recloser failed to function despite the danger detection, which led to a flashover that burned the electrical cables, including the aforementioned recloser.

Reclamation Feeders 1 to 5, which are all connected to Reclamation Substation, automatically went offline as a result of the event.

Ceneco technical personnel composed of engineers, dispatchers, and linemen promptly took the necessary steps to fix the problem, Ticar added.

Ticar further said that given the severity of the power trouble, “it took our technical team a number of hours to fully fix the damage.”

Emergency data furnished by Ceneco showed that each individual feeder’s power was restored in the following timeframe:

AFFECTED FEEDER TIME OF POWER RESTORATION

• Reclamation Feeder 1  –  7:47 p.m., October 15
• Reclamation Feeder 2  –  6:17 p.m., October 15
• Reclamation Feeder 3  –  6:36 p.m., October 15
• Reclamation Feeder 4  –  9:53 p.m., October 15
• Reclamation Feeder 5  –  7:00 p.m., October 15

Ceneco also apologized for any inconvenience caused by these unscheduled power interruptions that can occur anytime due to unanticipated causes which are beyond the control of the cooperative.