Explosion causes power outage in Amsterdam city center, west neighborhoods

Large portions of Amsterdam’s city center, and neighborhoods in the west and southwest of the capital were without power on Wednesday afternoon, after a report of an explosion at one of the city’s key electricity substations. There were four minor injuries reported, and tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power. People were advised to only call emergency services for "life-threatening" situations before power was ultimately restored after more than 90 minutes.

Shortly after 4 p.m., firefighters were dispatched to the substation on Marnixtraat after people called emergency services reporting a smell of smoke, emergency services records show. “During maintenance work on Marnixstraat, an explosion occurred,” a fire department spokesperson told AT5 without specifying what exactly was damaged in the blast.

“As a result, many connections are now down, and several streets in the city are now without power.” The spokesperson said. While a fire did not occur, about 50,000 customers were left without power in many parts of the city, a spokesperson for energy provider Liander told ANP.

Authorities distributed a NL-Alert to people in the affected region, saying in both Dutch and English that the expected duration of the outage is "currently unknown." The alert was sent to mobile devices in portions of the city's Centrum, West, Nieuw-West, and Zuid districts.

The message continued to say, "Do not use elevators and check if your neighbors need assistance. Only call 112 in life-threatening emergencies." The response was declared a Grip 2 regional emergency. The protocol calls for the establishment of a single incident commander at the scene, and a regional response team at an offsite location to assist in coordinating disaster response and crisis management.

An incident report from Liander showed dozens of streets were affected as a result of the outage. Power was unlikely to be restored before 6:30 p.m., and repair crews were not yet at the location.

The power outage was expected to be an inconvenience for many people trying to get home during the evening rush hour. Amsterdam public transport provider GVB said tram lines 3, 5, 7, 13, and 19 were all at a standstill, while trams 1, 2, 12, and 17 were all being diverted.

Metros, buses, and ferries were largely running their regular routes. There were also some unrelated train delays affecting routes between Amsterdam Centraal and Alkmaar, and between Amsterdam Zuid and The Hague.

Liander advised people affected by the blackout to keep heat inside their homes as best as possible. They should also keep refrigerators and freezer doors closed to allow the contents to remain cold.