Dry Dry Dry
The rains are late this year. Although the total rainfall year to date matches the entire rainfall of last year, those rains started early, and ended in May. The high rainfall early in the year means that the grass cover is very thick. As dry as it is it is very susceptible to fire. We have already had one fire this year. Eskom has not lives up to its mandate as the monopoly supplier of electricity in this country. Behaving in a typically third world manner, it forgot to start building power stations about ten years ago, and now electricity supply is seriously lagging behind demand.
Notwithstanding its recent 37% price increase, it no longer does power line patrols, or any form of preventative maintenance. The upshot: transformers leak, powerlines fall over and transmission cables break. In our case the wood pylon stay broke, and the high voltage cable was touched by an inquisitive heifer. Result one very dead heifer, a fire and about 10ha of burned out veld. Luckily it was noticed quickly before it got out of control. The linesman visited and put in a temporary stay, which, at the time of writing (some 3 weeks after the incident) is still there.
Imagine the outrage if we were as disinterested in our payments as they are in fulfilling their service obligations to the consumers.
The long range weather service GRIB.US is predicting heave rain for the area on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully they have got it right! Will keep you posted.
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