Workers repair a storm-ravaged hoarding in Patna on Monday. Picture by Jai Prakash

Patna, May 23: Three back-to-back thunderstorms over the past three days have left the city ravaged.

Apart from trees and electric poles, a large number of hoardings have also been hit, many of which are now posing a threat to the residents of the city.

Winds blew at 67kmph last Wednesday and reached a high of 100kmph on Saturday. Tilted iron rods of the hoardings and the cloth are hanging precariously at several high buildings in the city.

At many places, the vinylene advertisements have been blown away. What remains at these places are iron structures. A large hoarding at JJ Complex on East Boring Canal Road has bent and fallen on the rooftop of the building. “Fortunately the hoarding has fallen on the roof. A major accident would have occurred if the hoarding fell on the opposite direction, along the roadside. Apart from breaking the walls of the building, it might have fallen on the road and would have injured many people,” said Shyam Sundar Gupta, a retired officer residing in the area.

Another hoarding on another house just a few metres away from JJ Complex has completely bent and has fallen on the adjoining tree. The situation is similar at several other places on Boring Canal Road, Bailey Road near Sheikhpura More, Kankerbagh, Rajendra Nagar and several other places in the city. The authorities have expressed their concerns over the threat caused by these hoardings.

“The hoardings have been haphazardly erected everywhere in the city.

A number of such hoardings are huge iron structures and they directly fall on the nearby electric wires during high-speed squalls or storms. As iron is a good conductor of electricity, such falls often lead to short circuits and also cause the wires to break. Such incidents occurred at more than 10 places in Patna during the Saturday squall.

The duty of removing the heavy structures falls on us as none of the advertisement agencies or PMC turn up. The task of removing the hoardings and putting back the electric wires and poles take around six to eight hours. Till that time, there is a power cut in the entire area,” said a senior official from Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu).

The Patna Municipal Corporation gives the sanction for putting hoardings.

Power crisis

The power situation in Bhagalpur turned grim with the Lalmatiya-Jamalpur transmission line via Hathidah developing technical snags today.

The city people are yet to recover from the major power failure caused by the cyclone on May 21, damaging the 1,33,000KV Kahalgaon-Bhagalpur transmission line.

The Lalmatiya-Jamalpur line has developed snags because of the storm that lashed the area last night.