News: Dust storm triggers power outages in Gurugram-27-04-2022
Gurugram: A squall on Monday night, which lasted for about an hour, caused power to be disrupted for several hours in the city, officials of Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) said on Tuesday
Officials said that several trees were uprooted and electric poles were damaged in at least 50 areas, including sectors 14, 38, 47, 56, Rajendra Park, Pataudi, Farrukh Nagar and Sohna, caused the disruption, but all the problems were resolved by Tuesday morning.
They said that in some areas electricity supply was disconnected as a precautionary measure as soon as strong winds started blowing, but power was restored between 30 minutes and 90 minutes after the storm died down in most of the locations.
Officials, however, did say that most of Sector 4 remained without power for at least 12 hours after an electricity pole was damaged due to strong winds causing disruption in distribution lines.
Authorities also said that they received a large number of complaints from residents of New Palam Vihar, Rajendra Park, Sector 4, Basai, Bhawani Enclave and Shikohpur because power was not restored in these areas even till Tuesday morning.Power was restored by noon on Tuesday at most of these places.
Officials said that the storm resulted in the breakdown of 11kv feeders near Haldi Ram, Shiv Shakti, Munjal Showa, Chelawas, Khanpur, Patali and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (Farrukh Nagar) for more than two hourson Monday night.
Six agricultural feeders in Manesar also suffered breakdown for several hours due to the storm.
Residents said due to the lack of electricity, they also had to do without water for most of Tuesday.
Joginder Singh, founder president of Sushant Lok (phases 2 and 3) residents’ welfare association, said power supply remained disrupted for three or four hours in the area after the storm. “This resulted in acute water scarcity in the morning. No water was available for the whole day in the area. We only received water supply in the evening. These two phases in Sector 57 have around 25,000 residents,” he said.
Dhruv Bansal, the administrator and spokesperson of DLF residents’ core association, said around 200,000 residents of phases 1, 2 and 3 faced at least seven hours of power disruption after Monday night’s storm which was followed by water supply issues. “The water booster stations could not be operated due to power cuts. Thus, tanks could not fill up and there was no supply of water for the whole day in the three phases. On Tuesday evening too, there was a power cut just at the time of water supply,” Bansal said.
Bansal said that residents spent heavily on water tankers to fulfil the needs for the day.
Manoj Yadav, superintending engineer (DHBVN) of Gurugram 1 circle, said that most of the power supply was restored soon after the storm ended after authorities removed obstacles such as trees and branches which had uprooted and fallen on supply lines.
“No major infrastructure was damaged in circle 1 after the storm. Except for a few isolated areas, all power supply was restored to normalcy soon after squall had subsided,” he said.
PK Chauhan, superintending engineer (DHBVN) of Gurugram 2 circle, said all the main distribution lines became functional soon after the storm ended.
“Due to feeder breakdown at a few places, residents suffered for three or four hours. At least 25 poles had collapsed in Sohna from the storm. Tubewell supply lines in Sohna suffered but domestic supply was restored quickly there,” he said.
