Sector 28 suffered 22-hour power outage from Sunday night

Residents of Sector 28 suffered a power outage of over 22 hours from Sunday evening as two electricity poles adjacent to the main transformer were uprooted while a fault in the electricity supply was being fixed.

Nearly 150 houses in the sector were plunged into darkness from 8pm on Sunday. Normal supply was restored only around 6.30pm on Monday.

“The supply was disrupted from Sunday night when the electricity poles near the entrance of our colony got uprooted. As many as 176 houses in the colony were affected due to the power outage. Residents of 26 houses got relief at 11.30pm as their supply was restored. However, power supply to the remaining 150 houses was restored only on Monday evening,” Lt Col (retd) RK Anand, a resident, said.

He said that the electricity department officials started work in the morning. “Power department officials have been trying to fix the problem since 8am. The two poles were old, rusted and worn out. Fortunately, no mishap took place. Cranes were used to lift the poles. They dug pits for erecting new poles. Normal supply by evening,” Anand said.

Though summer is yet to set in, residents’ schedule was thrown out of gear as power backups had also run out in many houses. They were unable to watch TV, charge their mobile phones, use washing machines or get hot water from geysers.

“We boiled water on LPG stove for bathing as there was no power to run the geyser. However, the electricity department officials worked on the problem and fixed it,” Naresh Pandey of Sector 28 said.

Yatendra Garg, the executive engineer of Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (PVVNL), said that the supply was restored by the evening. “There was a disc puncture in an insulator near the transformer, which the linemen had gone to repair. However, when they went up to repair it, the poles crashed. These had to be replaced. We restored supply to some houses on Sunday night by partially connecting the sector with low tension cables from neighbouring supply network to give relief. The supply was normalised by evening,” he said.