Macau, 23 April 2019

Last night, the fire originating from the severely-damaged customer electrical equipment (main low voltage switchboard) of Edifício Kam Hoi San Block 14 has caused a power outage and affected 121 households. It is suspected that due to lack of maintenance, there were aging wiring and water leakage issues, resulting in short circuit faults. At 7:11 pm last night, CEM received call reporting the incident and the emergency team arrived at 7:36 pm. Although the power supply of the public power grid under CEM’s responsibility was in normal operation, CEM dispatched technicians to analyze the damage of the customer's power supply facilities and provide support for the sake of safety of the building residents and the community. In the early morning of April 23, CEM successfully arranged temporary power supply for the public part of the building.

Afterwards, CEM continued to proactively communicate with the management company, residents and the community members, as well as provide technical support to the management company’s electrician, striving to restore power for the residents as soon as possible. CEM will arrange to provide temporary power supply to the affected households right after the installation of temporary switchboard is completed by the residents’ electrician tonight (23 April). To ensure safe energy usage of the residents, CEM has notified the residents that the repair of the damaged electrical installations must be completed within a week in order to resume normal power supply and ensure the safety of the residents of the building and community.

Regarding the case of Edifício Kam Hoi San block 14, CEM has posted notices in the building back in November 2017 to inform the owners that the building communal electrical installations such as the main switchboard and rise cables were deteriorated and rusted severely, posing a threat to the safety and reliability of the building’s power supply. The owners were urged to hire electrical contractors to carry out renewal projects. All applications for increase of power subscribed demand have also been on hold.

In view of continuing lack of regular maintenance, repair and replacement of public electrical installations in many buildings in Macau, CEM has co-organized seminars with major associations every year to educate owners that it is their shared responsibilities to arrange regular maintenance and repair for the customers’ communal electrical installations inside the building, so as to ensure their own safe use of energy. However, the situation has not seen much improvement, and accidents such as fires still occur from time to time. CEM once again called on the owners to face up to the problem and hire experienced electrical contractors to regularly inspect and repair their building's communal electrical installations.