Murmansk and Severomorsk were left without electricity for almost nine hours

Update: By 18:30 Moscow time, electricity supply in Murmansk and Severomorsk was restored, announced the head of the region, Andrei Chibis. The cause of the accident, according to him, was damage to the protective cable on the power line. The Murmansk branch of the Rosseti North-West company explained that the ground wire (it is pulled over power line wires to protect them from lightning strikes) was damaged “due to strong winds and icing at temperatures below -31℃.”

In Murmansk and Severomorsk, “some of the facilities are disconnected from the power supply,” said the governor of the Murmansk region, Andrei Chibis, in his Telegram channel.

“A power outage was recorded on a section of a power transmission line with temporary supports. The supports themselves are not damaged,” Chibis wrote, adding that emergency recovery teams are switching consumers to the power supply using a backup circuit.

The Rosseti North-West company reported that boiler houses have already been transferred to backup electricity supply circuits. “Load redistribution continues to connect other socially important facilities and some residential buildings,” the company reported in its Telegram channel.

The Shot telegram channel writes, citing local residents, that the electricity went out around 06:00 local time. Some residents reported that not only did they have no electricity, but their heating was turned off. Most of the complaints came from residents of the Leninsky district of the city.

The mayor of Murmansk, Ivan Lebedev, said that due to a power failure, public transport was switched to a special operating mode, and outdoor lighting and illumination in the city were temporarily turned off.

The reasons why the supply of electricity through the power lines was interrupted, the restoration of which the authorities reported after the accident, are still unknown.

According to the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia, in Murmansk on the morning of Saturday, January 31, it was about 20 degrees below zero.

• Murmansk and the Murmansk region, including the city of Severomorsk, were partially without power on January 23 due to an accident on power lines. Five power line towers collapsed due to icing, snowstorms and gusty winds. The power outage led to a halt in boiler house operations. Several tens of thousands of residents were left without heat. A state of emergency has been declared in the region. On January 27, the Murmansk governor announced that power supply to the regional center and Severomorsk had been completely restored.