India: Mumbai shocked by historic ‘Black Monday’ power outage
- 4 years ago
Power supply restored in most areas within hours especially to hospitals and railways on priority basis. Chief Minister Thackeray orders immediate inquiry into grid failure.
A massive, prolonged power outage brought life in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and surrounding areas to a halt yesterday morning, as four lines maintained by the state-run transmission company simultaneously failed to function.
The unprecedented power failure brought life to a standstill for a few hours at mid-morning, affecting several essential services, including suburban trains ferrying essential services workers, online exams and water supply.
The Monday outage erupted at peak office hours as traffic signals stopped and hospital procedures were called off. Water supply and internet connectivity were affected. Exams were also postponed and courts forced to call off hearings.
The outage lasted at least two hours in many places but stretching to as long as five, six and even eight hours in others, caused disruptions in water supply in suburban areas such as Andheri (East and West), Vile Parle (East and West), Oshiwara and Jogeshwari.
However, Mumbai airport was one of the few places unaffected by the outage. Those in flight operations switched on the UPS.
The outage began at 10.05 am. Power disruptions were reported from all parts of the Island city and its suburbs, as well as from outlying areas of Thane, Panvel, Dombivili and Kalyan, and even as far away as Lonavala.
Suburban train services too were affected for almost two hours beginning 10am with commuters stranded in trains in between stations.
As the trains are open only for essential services workers because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the power cut had a domino effect on essential services as staff failed to turn up for work on time. Long distance services were also disrupted.
A statement from Central Railway (CR) said train services were restored at 12:26 pm. Western Railway (WR) said train services resumed from 12:20 pm. Harbour line services resumed at 10.55am and on main line by 12.25pm
RPF personnel helped passengers alight from stranded trains at local railway stations like Churchgate, Matunga and Thane, commuters were seeing walking along the tracks to reach their destinations.
Road traffic was crippled as traffic signals went on the blink. There are around 650 traffic signals in the city, of which 90% stopped functioning, forcing traffic police to manually direct motorists. The South-bound traffic is anyways heavy on Monday morning and the blank signals made it tougher for everyone on the roads.
While power supply in many parts was restored within two hours, in some parts of suburban Mumbai and Thane, supply had not been restored late into the evening.
More than 65 lakh consumers of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) were affected by the tripping of the network passing through Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company Ltd (MSETCL)’s Kalwa substation. Of the 2,800 MW supplied to the MMR, 1000MW passes through this section. The last time Mumbai experienced such a long outage was in 2018.
Tertiary hospitals too did not face operational hitches due to emergency power backup. However, smaller hospitals and nursing homes put routine surgeries on hold. At KEM Hospital and JJ Hospitals, the outage lasted four hours.
Mayor Kishori Pednekar visited the Covid care centre at BKC to ensure all was well. BMC commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal directed diesel to be provided to hospitals and Covid care centres.
Schools had to cancel online classes and exams. Bombay Scottish School in Mahim had semester exams scheduled for class VIII to X but allowed students to resume writing after power resumed.
The ongoing final-year online exams in Mumbai colleges had to be put off to another day, and hearings at the Bombay High Court and lower courts resumed after two hours. Equipped with solid back-ups, the airport and stock exchange were unaffected.
Hospitals, with ICUs filled with Covid-19 patients, switched to generators immediately. In preparation for a potentially long wait for power to be restored, Mumbai municipal commissioner I S Chahal asked all hospitals to arrange for sufficient supply of diesel for at least eight hours.
The Times of India newspaper in its viewpoint suggested that Mumbai needs to be better prepared with a contingency plan to deal with a mega blackout. The islanding system, which held the city in good stead under such conditions, needs to be upgraded. As part of disaster management planning, it is critical for all vital installations and essential services in the metropolitan region to remain operational even in the event of an outage.
A statement from CMO said the power supply to Mumbai was cut off at around 10 am due to breakdown of the power line. However, the power supply was restored, in major parts, within three and a half hours on “a war-footing”, it said
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray ordered an inquiry into the grid failure and also held a meeting with Energy Minister Nitin Raut, senior government and energy officials on Monday evening. The probe will look into technical faults behind the outage in Mumbai and those responsible for it, a statement from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) said.
“An investigation should be carried out to see whether the power outage was unexpected or expected or whether there was any negligence in it,” said Thackeray, instructing officials to repair the power lines on a war-footing.
Thackeray further asked the officials to ensure that such incidents did not recur. “Though there is no possibility of such incidents happening in a series, we have to be more vigilant in the future and make further improvements in the system if necessary,” said the Chief Minister, asking the officials to be alert considering the rise in demand for electricity with a forecast of heavy rain over the next four days.
The last time Mumbai experienced such a long outage was in 2018.
Source: INDIAN NEWS AGENIES
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