Astana residents observe strange flash in the sky

Tengrinews.kz – On the night of 5 March, residents of Astana noticed an unusual green or blue flash in the sky. People in the capital shared video footage of the strange phenomenon online. The cause of what happened was later explained by the company Astana-REC.

Users on Threads reported that at about 8:00 PM a green light suddenly flared up in the sky, and street lighting immediately went out; some people saw a blue flash. Right after the flash, power went out on the left bank of the capital.

Residents write that people living in residential complexes near the flash were left without electricity.

Commenters suggested it was a short circuit.

“One of the substations had a short circuit, or an arc occurred during disconnection. The street lighting uses sodium lamps, which are very sensitive to such things. They switch off and then turn back on when they cool down… it takes literally about 30 seconds,” one user wrote.

There were also suggestions that it might have been a reflection from some kind of explosion on the ground.

In response to an official request from Tengrinews.kz, the company stated that the cause was a technical fault on a power line.

“On 5 March 2026 at 7:54 PM, a technical malfunction occurred on a 10 kV overhead power line due to adverse weather conditions. An emergency response crew was dispatched to the site,” JSC Astana-REC reported.

According to the company, after repair and restoration work, power supply was fully restored at 11:20 PM.

During the outage, private residential houses in the village of Zarechny on Zhideli, Akniyet and Ushkopir streets were left without electricity.