Residents of Modiin Illit are expressing outrage after prolonged and repeated power outages left families in several buildings without electricity for hours, with some residents saying they were without power from shortly before Shabbos until after Shabbos ended.
Shmuel and Rachel, two residents of the city, described the difficult conditions during an interview on Kol Chai’s Osim Seder program, hosted by Hillel Kessler. They said the latest outage was not an isolated incident but part of what residents say has become a recurring problem in the city.
Shmuel said electricity went out at approximately 4 p.m. Friday, in the middle of preparations for Shabbos. Residents initially expected service to be restored within the timeframe they had been given, but the hours continued to pass with no electricity.
Shmuel ate the Friday night seudah elsewhere, but when he returned home, he discovered that his street was still completely dark.
“I’m simply helpless. At the end of the day, I have no lights, no air conditioning, I have nothing,” he said.
The food that had been placed on the hot plate for Shabbos was also left cold because of the outage.
Conditions grew increasingly difficult overnight as families struggled through the August heat without air conditioning. Shmuel said residents tried taking showers to cool themselves down, while some families attempted to run electrical cables from generators belonging to neighbors.
The most painful moment, he said, came when he could hear “the crying of the babies from the upper floors.”
Children were forced to cope with the darkness, he added, while members of his own household were barely able to sleep through the sweltering night.
Rachel, who lives in another section of Modiin Illit, said residents have experienced numerous outages in recent weeks and that the latest incident was far from unusual.
She cited another outage on Thursday during a critical period of Shabbos preparations, as well as a nearly three-hour blackout on Tisha B’Av.
“It’s a real catastrophe; it has already become unbearable,” Rachel said.
She also claimed that following one of the outages, the building’s solar water-heating system was damaged, forcing residents to rely on electric water heaters instead.
The Israel Electric Corporation said in response that crews worked to identify the source of the malfunction and restore electricity to the affected area.
According to the company, an initial investigation found that electricity consumption in the area was experiencing “higher demand than planned.”
The utility said some of the discrepancy stems from electrical connections and additional consumption that were not reported in advance and therefore were not incorporated into planning for the local electrical grid.
The Israel Electric Corporation added that it is working together with the Modiin Illit municipality on a professional assessment of the situation and on long-term solutions aimed at strengthening the reliability of the city’s electricity supply and preventing similar outages from recurring.
{Matzav.com}
