Aila takes a toss, city's power goes haywire

Santanu Saraswati
First it’s the Left Front’s debacle in the just concluded general elections in the hands of Trinamool Congress-Congress alliance. Then it’s the Aila, which left even the Left patriarch Jyoti Basu’s residence at Indira Bhawan in Salt Lake without electricity since Monday afternoon.

Even Salt Lake, for the first time after the state board made power supply 24 x7 because of the information technology companies, went without electricity for more than 24 hours—in some parts more than that, where restoration work took more than 30 hours.

According to state board officials, the power utility didn’t have any problem with the transmission section—but distribution lines went haywire after Aila struck the city and its surrounds on Monday afternoon. “The districts are the worst affected. In some areas our engineers have to reconnect the whole distribution network. It would take time, at least no less than five working days to streamline the entire distribution network,” a highly placed official with the state board told Hindustan Times.

Restoration work in areas like Madhyamgram where supply is controlled by the Abdalpur distribution centre of the state board has only two workmen—that two on contract basis, whose working hour is till 5 pm only. “We have enormous manpower crisis, which is hampering our restoration work. Few thousands engineers and workmen retired by 2007, but the state board has no man power resource to manage crisis,” a power department official told Hindustan Times.

The condition of the city and its surrounds in CESC-network, was however, much better. Except in areas where there is a concentration of overhead network, supply was more or less uninterrupted even there were cases of uprooting of trees. CESC spokesperson, however, described the damage as one of the worst in recent memory, particularly in areas, where there is concentration of overhead network.

According to executive director (commercial), Dilip Sen, areas like Swiss Park, some parts of Lake Gardens, Prince Anwar Shah Road, Kasba, some parts of Ballyganj, Jatin Das Road, Hindustan Park, Chetla, Jadavpur, and EM By-pass, where the power utility has underground cable networking remained unaffected. “We have to stop generation in the evening peak hours, as demand for electricity was just 833-megaq watts—550 mega watts less than normal day,” Sen told Hindustan Times.

Both the CESC and state board had successfully restored supply of emergency services—in Kolkata, it was restored by Monday evening, while Salt Lake hospitals had to run with generators till the power supply was restored on Tuesday afternoon. District hospitals and health centres, especially in South 24 Parganas, are without electricity till the time of filing this report.

CESC is expecting to restore the power supply in Kolkata, adjoining Howrah and North 24 Parganas by Tuesday as engineers are working in close coordination with the Kolkata Police, fire brigade and Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). But there are little hopes for consumers residing in state board areas to have their lights on in the next 48 hours at least!
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