Mr George Uriesi, MD, FAAN
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN has said that heavy rain storm that occurred in Lagos Monday, March 4, disrupted
power supply to the Murtala Muhammed Airport for about six minutes due
to a power surge from the two main PHCN power supply sources to the
airport.
A statement signed my the spokesperson, Mr Yakubu Datti stated that 'the
airport is connected to two main power sources from Ejigbo and Egbin
power stations. The storm initially knocked off the power supply from
Ejigbo which led to a three-minute outage at the airport before our
engineers switched over to the alternate power supply source from Egbin.
That supply line was later affected by the storm, leading to another
three minute power outage.
'Our
engineers then switched over to the airport’s standby generators, some
panels of which were unfortunately soaked with water, due to the heavy
flooding that resulted from the heavy rainfall. This resulted in a
blackout at the “E” wing of the airport, including the avio bridges. It
was for this reason that arriving passengers on an international flight
were processed through an alternative route at the terminal and in the
process, were exposed momentarily to the rain.
All
departing flights were also delayed for about 30 minutes, to enable our
engineers rectify the faults in the generators. Full power supply was
later restored to the airport and all operations resumed in earnest.
There were no accidents or injuries to anybody at the airport as a
result of the power outage,' he said.
Mr Datti said the 'the
power improvement project at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, which would
eliminate incidents such as this at the airport, has been completed and
is being test run, preparatory to the formal commissioning of the
project.
