After RG Kar last week and SSKM on Wednesday, it was the turn of NRS on Thursday:

A power cut before dawn in a building that houses the hospital?s emergency and surgery wings hampered treatment of patients for hours.

The lights went out at 1.30 am as Rekha Kundu lay writhing in pain and her son Moloy frantically tried to grab the attention of the passing nurses.

For two long hours after that, Rekha, and around 500 other patients, groped in the dark as hospital staff combed the wards? stores for a candle.

?After a long search, we managed to get hold of a solitary candle,? said a senior nurse on duty at the emergency ward on Thursday morning.

With the only ray of light, the nurses went about the wards, trying to pacify patients, several of them in great pain in the surgery ward.

?It was quite humid last night and with the ceiling fans not working, patients were sweating profusely. Every minute seemed like hell,? was how another nurse described the scene.

The situation soon threatened to spin out of control, after some residents of the area arrived with a critically-ill elderly woman, only to find the emergency ward plunged in darkness. An accident victim, too, was ushered in a little later, but to no avail.

?It was outrageous. Here I was with a half-dead woman, and the hospital authorities did not have a clue as to when the power would be restored. We had no choice but to rush her elsewhere,? exclaimed Subhas Baurie, a relative of the ailing woman.

The CESC engineers, in the meantime, were fumbling to determine what had gone wrong with the power supply. Cable faults were eventually detected in the Sealdah court area. The supply was restored after 3.30 am.

?Not one, but five snags caused innumerable problems for us last night,? stated a CESC spokesman.

The power utility later explained that telecom agencies were conducting micro tunnelling on several roads in the city and one of the agencies could have damaged the CESC cables.

?We have not been able to identify the culprit, but it is clear that the cables were destroyed. Perhaps it was inadvertent,? the spokesman added.

The health ministry had convened a high-level meeting on Tuesday to find out why power cuts were affecting work at city hospitals and what could be done to resolve the crisis. The meeting was preceded by a nightlong power cut in the gynaecology ward of RG Kar.