Parts of Sliema suffer two-hour power cut on hottest July in history
Power restored to affected areas stretching from Ferries to Tigne shortly before 10pm
Updated 9.50pm
A Sliema neighbourhood stretching across the busy Ferries part of the town was left without power for just over two hours on Saturday evening due to an unplanned power cut.
According to Enemalta’s power outage map, roughly one square kilometre of Sliema – from the Sliema Ferries Terminal to the edge of the Fortina hotel and from the seafront to Triq Tigne – was impacted.
Power went out in the area - a densely populated combination of residential buildings, restaurants, cafes and hotels - at around 7.30pm.
Enemalta’s outage map attributed the outage to a “high tension fault”. An Enemalta spokesperson told Times of Malta that power was restored to all affected areas by 9.50pm.
Other areas of Sliema were unaffected by the unexpected outage.
“Sitting in the dark whilst all around me is lit up like it's Christmas,” one woman wrote in a residents’ group, along with a photo of lit-up buildings from her balcony.
Many residents said they were unable to get through to Enemalta's customer care hotline.
The power cut came at the tail end of the hottest July day in recorded history. Temperatures soared to over 43°C during the day and are expected to remain high at a sweltering 27°C throughout the night.
Earlier in the week, swathes of northern Malta, including Mellieħa, Qawra and Mġarr were left without power for hours on end.
Enemalta said those power cuts were “unrelated” and said the country has “sufficient electricity generation to meet the current demand.”
The country has been plagued by summertime power cuts for successive summers in recent years, with problems reaching a head in 2023 following a days-long heatwave. The Energy Ministry subsequently pledged a multi-million, multi-year infrastructural drive to upgrade distribution grids, following years of chronic under-investment.
Saturday's record high temperatures are poised to return when the sun rises on Sunday morning: the Malta Met Office has issued a red weather warning and said maximum temperatures will shoot past 40°C until Tuesday, July 21.