A power cut hit homes on Rue des Sablieres and Avenue du Razes in Bram, a town in France's Aude region, at lunchtime on Tuesday, July 28, 2026.
Weather conditions gave no warning of the failure. The sky was clear, wind was almost nonexistent, and no construction work was underway in the area.
Grid operator Enedis sent a response team after several residents reported the outage. Remote checks turned up no anomaly that could explain the cut.
Twenty homes reconnected within minutes
Of the 23 households affected, 20 were reconnected within minutes after Enedis switched them onto another transformer using the network's mesh layout.
The remaining three homes had to wait about three hours while technicians laid a temporary cable on the ground to restore their power.
Underground cables hide the fault
With the immediate emergency resolved, Enedis still needed to find the cause of the outage. Search efforts continued until nightfall before being called off.
In this neighborhood, as in much of the town, the power network is fully buried underground. Unlike an overhead line, where a break is immediately visible, a buried cable gives no visible clues.
Technicians returned the next day with specialized detection equipment able to pinpoint the fault beneath the road surface.
Two faults located
On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 29, the search identified two anomalies. The first was on Rue des Sablieres, about 30 meters from Rue Caizergues coming from Avenue du Razes. The second was in a grassy area at the corner of Avenue du Razes and Rue des Ecoles.
After obtaining the necessary permits, excavation crews dug up about 10 square meters of roadway to a depth of more than two meters. The work was made more difficult by the intense heat and by the presence of other utility lines nearby, including fiber optic, drinking water and sewage lines.
Heat blamed for the fault
Enedis technicians traced the incident to the succession of heatwaves. Heat absorbed by the asphalt gradually seeps into the ground, which can no longer dissipate it because of a prolonged lack of rain. Junction boxes and cable connections then come under significant thermal strain, which can weaken the equipment and trigger protective devices to shut off power.
Road repairs were completed by late afternoon on Saturday, August 1, and traffic on the street was then able to resume.
