Well, which was it?

Yesterday's power failure - I hate the trendy, ugly word 'outage' - was front page news in Emirates Today and Gulf News. Interestingly, they identified different causes. Are they talking about the same event?

Gulf News tells us: According to DEWA officials, the problem was traced back to the Mall of the Emirates substation located adjacent to the mall, which also serves areas of Al Barsha.

However, according to EmTod: Large parts of Dubai were left without power after a cable fire at Jebel Ali power station yesterday.

"We sent many fire engines to assist the Jebel Ali Civil Defence fire engines in putting out the fire," a Dubai Civil Defence official said. "It took three hours to bring the fire under control."

But apart from the very different versions of events, here's a bit that intrigued me in Gulf News' report:

Do not exceed 'allotted supply'

In the wake of several power cuts throughout Dubai, Dewa officials have urged the public to be wary of overextending their power supplies.

"It is very normal for small scale, contained power cuts to take place when demand is very high, such as in the summer months," said Dewa spokesperson, Abdullah Al Hajri.
Downplaying the incidents as 'isolated', Al Hajri indicated the situation was entirely normal during the summer months.

"Some isolated problems are to be expected during the summer," he told Gulf News, adding that the main cause is people exceeding their allotted power supplies, putting strain on the area substations.

Al Hajri said that subscribers are advised to inform Dewa about additional loads placed on the electricity supply.

People exceeding their allotted supply? Maybe I'm the only one who didn't know that there's an 'allotted supply'. Or is it a language problem in the reporting?