A violent storm, named Charles, left one man dead and another seriously injured in Casablanca on Wednesday evening as a massive power failure brought trams to a halt, knocked out traffic signals and plunged several neighborhoods into darkness during rush hour.
The blackout struck as office workers were heading home. On Boulevard Abdelmoumen, streetlights went out, tram services came to a standstill and traffic began piling up at junctions where signals had stopped working.
Lifts stopped in residential and office buildings, while some banks and insurance company offices remained lit by backup generators.
The disruption spread across Sidi Belyout, Maârif, Gauthier, Bourgogne, Hay Hassani, Aïn Chock, Sidi Maârouf, El Fida, Ben M’sick, Sbata and Sidi Othmane.
Bouskoura, Ouled Azzouz and Dar Bouazza in neighboring Nouaceur province were also hit.
At HEM International University, a planned tribute to Abdelali Benamour had to be postponed because of the power cut.
The Casablanca-Settat Regional Multiservice Company (SRM) said the fault occurred at 4:48pm on high-voltage lines belonging to the national transmission network.
The National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water (ONEE), which put the start of the outage at 4:55pm, said strong winds and thunderstorms had damaged four 225-kilovolt transmission lines supplying the Ouled Haddou and Dar Bouazza substations.
Both the main and backup power connections were knocked out simultaneously, an occurrence ONEE described as exceptionally rare.
The distributor activated its emergency arrangements and carried out switching operations on the medium-voltage network in an attempt to limit the disruption.
A crisis meeting was held at the wilaya headquarters, attended by Casablanca-Settat wali Mohamed Mhidia and ONEE Director General Tarik Hamane.
Casablanca plongée dans le noir. (A.Et-Tahiry/Le360)
At around 6pm, as teams worked to restore electricity, a wall running alongside the sports grounds of Abdellah Guennoune High School collapsed near the scrap market in Salmia.
“The wall fell on people,” a man interviewed at the scene told Le360.
He said a section roughly 20 meters long had come down near an area where people regularly offer their services to traders.
One man was killed and at least one other person was seriously injured and taken to hospital. A parked vehicle was also crushed beneath the fallen wall.
The wall of Abdellah Guennoune High School in the Salmia neighborhood collapsed shortly after 18:00 on Wednesday (K.Essalak/Le360)
Power began returning to affected neighborhoods at 6:23pm.
By 7:36pm, about half of the affected customers had been reconnected. Electricity was restored in Bourgogne and California by around 8:20pm, while supply remained intermittent in parts of Sidi Maârouf.
Bachkou, the Panoramique neighborhood and areas along Boulevards Taddart and La Mecque were among those where power subsequently returned.
ONEE said all affected supply substations were back in service by 8:54pm, nearly four hours after the blackout began.
The storm disrupted operations beyond the city’s streets.
At the Port of Casablanca, ships were moved to the roadstead as a precaution earlier in the day, with port activity almost at a standstill by early evening.
At Mohammed V International Airport, Air France flight AF1196 from Paris abandoned its approach and diverted to Rabat-Salé.
Following the restoration of electricity, Casablanca Mayor Nabila Rmili apologized to residents in a Facebook post, acknowledging the difficulties faced by families and businesses.
ONEE and SRM also apologized to customers affected by the outage. ONEE said its emergency teams would remain on alert until the severe weather had passed.
The General Directorate of Meteorology (DGM) had forecast gusts of 80 to 90km/h in Casablanca and Nouaceur on Wednesday evening, along with rainfall of 20 to 40mm through Thursday noon.
Further showers are expected in parts of the country on Thursday and Friday, with conditions forecast to improve gradually from Saturday.
