(Ebru News/AP) Thousands of workers on Thursday were evacuated from two office towers in central Melbourne, Australia, after an explosion in an electrical substation in a car park caused a fire in one of the buildings and cut power in another.
Six people were taken to hospital and 48 were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation and shock following the explosion, the national news agency AAP reported.
More than 100 people became trapped in lifts when power to the 31-storey building and an adjoining office block was cut, emergency services said.
Office workers said acrid black smoke poured out of the building and thousands of workers had to walk down stairwells to safety as more than 50 firefighters rushed to the scene.
Several people with disabilities had to be carried down up to 14 floors to safety.
The substation "had a number of high voltage feeds running into it. And obviously one of them had faltered and caught fire. So as a result of that, we had a large amount of smoke generated from the fire that was in there," the Metropolitan Fire Brigade assistant chief told reporters.
In all, more than four thousand people were evacuated from the two buildings, AAP reported, though the Australian Broadcasting Corporation put the number of evacuees at seven thousand.
Power was restored to one building several hours after the incident, but officials said it could be up to two days before power returned to the other.
A spokesman for electricity distributor Citipower said the explosion also affected power supply to about 240 predominately business customers in the surrounding blocks, but that power was later restored.
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Thousands Evacuate after Explosion in Melbourne
07
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2007
Dec
2007
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