Storm, rain batter Punjab as power outages reported from several districts

Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Patiala, May 30

Heavy rains accompanied by high-velocity winds late Saturday night uprooted electricity poles and trees in many parts of Punjab causing major disruption of power supply. In some districts, supplies were yet to be restored due to shortage of material.

The Tribune had highlighted how shortage of material is hitting the field officers and critical repairs are pending.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/pspcl-short-of-equipment-outage-fear-looms-ahead-of-paddy-season-260578

Districts like Mohali, Patiala, Sangrur, Bathinda and in parts of Fatehgarh Sahib the power supply was hit due to lack of material following the thunderstorm.

“The wind storm of last night has caused widespread disruptions and our engineers are struggling to restore supply due to material shortages”, said a senior Engineer with PSPCL.

Also read: In photos: Power outages, trees uprooted across Tricity after rain, high-velocity winds

Power outage was also reported at the premier Netaji Subhash National Institute of Sports (NIS) since yesterday night. Engineers are still trying to rectify the fault as some wires have been damaged along with a transformer.

A week earlier the PSEB Engineers association had written to management of PSPCL claiming, “It is our bounden duty as a body of professional engineers of the power sector to warn the management that non availability of critical materials like cables, poles, transformers, non availability of sufficient regular staff and lax decision making at management level is detrimental to ensuring the energy security of the State during this critical juncture; and will adversely affect the service of providing 24x7 reliable power supply to the public, farmers and healthcare facilities of the State for which only management will be responsible”.

Morinda, Kurali, Chamkaur Sahib go without power after storm

The towns of Morinda, Chamkaur Sahib and hundreds of surrounding villages have been without electricity as a large number of power supply poles were uprooted during the storm. The authorities said they would try to restore power supply to the towns of Morinda and Chamkaur Sahib by evening.

It would take at least 24 hours to restore supply to all affected areas.

No loss of life or private property has been reported till now.

Zirakpur residents had to endure a hot Sunday afternoon as power poles were damaged and trees uprooted in the storm that wrecked the Tricity on Saturday night.

Many parts of Zirakpur, Baltana, Kishanpura, Panchsheel area, were powerless till noon Sunday. There was largescale destruction as hoardings and temporary structures were blown away by high-intensity winds.