NOIDA/GREATER NOIDA: Nearly 430 electricity
poles got damaged along with trees and hoardings in Noida and
Greater Noida following Sunday afternoon’s duststorm. Many sectors went without power for over 12 to 20 hours. Sectors 11, 100, 21, 62, 28, 99 and more had no supply since 6 pm from Sunday to nearly 12 noon on Monday. As many inverter batteries were exhausted, residents were forced to stay awake the entire night. In other sectors like 8, 12, 56, 58, 120, 72 etc., residents had to wait for long hours before supply was resumed late evening at 10pm on Sunday.
Ironically, a day before the outage, officials from the power department held a meeting with members of
Federation of Noida Resident Welfare Association (FONRWA) where discussions were held on damaged and rusted electrical poles and panels, underground cable, cleaning of transformer areas, voltage fluctuation, upgrade of transformers and other preventive maintenance measures related to power supply.
“Even after more than 12 hours, power supply was not restored in Sector 100. By 11pm on Sunday, we were assured that since no pole had fallen in the sector, power will be restored soon. However, when this did not happen till 12am, we called up the junior engineer of the area as well as the lineman, but failed to reach them. Most residents, including the elderly women and children had to spend the night under open sky in sector park,” said
Pawan Yadav, a resident of Sector 100 and member of FONRWA.
A similar situation was faced by residents of sectors 44, 21 and 67. In industrial sector 11, the power was not restored even till late afternoon. Also, Sector 34 has not got water supply for over 30 hours now as Ganga water pump near Manas hospital has been disrupted since Sunday's storm.
According to A K Singh, superintending engineer, PVVNL, the department was up all night and on Monday morning to restore the power.
Hoarding uprooted due to duststorm.