The rain was a welcome relief for most Bengalureans. However, what they didn’t expect was a series of power cuts that would leave them feeling helpless and restless. For the city’s residents living in the south and eastern parts of Bengaluru, this was their reality. Several calls were made to BESCOM office to enquire when the power would return but their harried voices fell on deaf ears.
A city plunged in darkness and customer service inaccessible. Is it the Apocalypse ?? #bescom
— Azmal (@azmalbasha) May 17, 201#bescom No power in Banaswadi and sorounding areas since 6 pm today.whats happening
— John Bosco (@djbosc) May 17, 201Shame on #bangalore!! Does the #government even care. No #electricity since 12 hrs in #Indiranagar. End our woes #bescom.#total#Blackout
— Ekta Prasad (@ektaspace) May 17, 2017#bescom Complete powercut in Ejipura, Kormangala and nearby areas after heavy rains. Too much inconvenience. Is someone looking into it?
— Priyam Khanna (@KhannaPriyam19) May 17, 2017In the past few days, the south and eastern parts of Bengaluru experienced power outages for more than three hours. In response, BESCOM officials said their engineers were working tirelessly to restore power. However, why couldn’t BESCOM supply power when it rained? What went wrong in the city’s power infrastructure?
According to officials at BESCOM, the storm damaged the incoming power supply from generating stations located at Vidyanagar MUSS. This was the reason that there wasn’t any power in areas like Devanahalli and Vidyanagar. Apart from this, feeders were flooded with water at Kaggalipura, Marathahalli, Whitefield and Kadugodi, reported Bangalore Mirror.
Other localities such as Banasawadi, Sanjayanagar, ISRO layout and Kaggadasapura faced a similar situation. But it isn’t just flooded transformers that led to the power outage. Officials at BESCOM say that the power outage is partly due to the forest department’s inefficacy.
They alleged that the forest department is responsible for clearing trees and their failing to do so left BESCOM engineers without much option. K Siddaraju, Director (Technical) BESCOM, said, “While our personnel had repaired installations they could not connect with the poles as forest officials had to clear the fallen trees.”
He added that such power outages can be avoided if there’s better co-ordination with other departments. “Hence, a separate meeting, including officials from BBMP, KPTCL has been called on Wednesday. We tried our best to attend to maximum number of calls and resolve the problem at the earliest,” added Siddaraju.