Thousands of vehicles were stranded on the Penang Bridge after Tenaga Nasional Bhd's high-voltage cables caught fire at Km2, Perai.

penang bridge is burning Tenaga Nasional vice-president for transmission Rozimi Remeli said the incident, at about 10am, involved three 132KW cables under the bridge.

A Penang Bridge Sdn Bhd spokesman said the fire forced the closure of the right lanes on both ways of the bridge, causing traffic congestion stretching about 10km.

Black smokes billowing from under the bridge.

Rozimi said Tenaga Nasional staff have now put out the fire.

He also said that power disruption was limited to several areas like Bayan Baru, Georgetown and Gelugor.

"We managed to restore powers to these areas within two minutes after the fire," he told reporters at the scene.

   

He also assured the people in the state that power would be sufficient to meet the demand.

"We apologise to the consumers involved," he said, adding that apart from powers from Seberang Perai, Penang also received supply from the Gelugor and Juru plants channelled via submarine cables.

He said Tenaga Nasional was now identifying the cause of the incident.

Similar incident took place in 1995, he said.

- Bernama

Traffic flow back to normal at 6pm