Feb. 23: Metro rail stalled and traffic signals went blank as north, central and south Calcutta suffered a power outage during the weekday morning rush after all three units of CESC's Budge Budge plant tripped because of a sudden snag.
Some government hospitals were also affected but power back-up ensured that ICUs, ITUs and operating theatres did not suffer. Traffic cops switched to hand signalling to avoid a rush-hour chaos at various intersections where the lights went off.
Several Madhyamik centres without generators escaped the power cut because today's paper was scheduled from noon. The outage started at 9.53am and power supply was fully restored by 10.30am, CESC officials said.
Sources at Nabanna said chief minister Mamata Banerjee convened a meeting in the afternoon to take stock. Power minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, power department secretary S. Kishore, chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee and CESC managing director Aniruddha Basu briefed the chief minister.
Mamata asked the power minister and the bureaucrats to ensure that in the event of any such snag, CESC received adequate supply from the state-run power utilities to make up for any shortfall, an official said.
The fault
"A preliminary assessment points to a technical snag in a transmission line from the Budge Budge facility," a senior CESC official said. "The system is designed in a way that every unit will automatically shut down once a major glitch happens. This is to avoid further damage."
CESC has instituted an internal inquiry into the cause of the outage. Officials of the power utility, which caters to most of Calcutta, said the snag was "accidental". Demand at this time of the year is far lower than what it is in summer.
During the outage, CESC borrowed power from the newest plant in Haldia and the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd. The Budge Budge plant was functioning at 100 per cent by 5pm, a company official said.
Impact on Metro
Metro trains did not run from 9.53am till 10.08am. CESC supplies power to Metro Railway through four receiving sub-stations - Masterda Surya Sen, Jatin Das Park, Central and Shyambazar. Power to all four sub-stations snapped together, officials said. Even if one station were working, trains would have run.
Trains came to a halt the moment these sub-stations ran out of power. Metro officials said there was no evacuation inside the tunnels.
Kaustav Majumdar, a student at Presidency College, reached Kalighat station around 9.50am, moments before the blackout. "Power supply was restored after a few seconds but only a few lights came back on," he said.
Kaustav boarded a train that arrived at Kalighat around 10.05am, but the AC rake did not leave the station until after at least 15 minutes, he said.
Sumit Chakraborty, a resident of Uttarpara who works in a brokerage firm near Jeevan Deep, had boarded an AC rake at Dum Dum around 9.40am. "The train got stranded in a tunnel for more than three minutes before entering Park Street. There was panic," he recounted.
Hospitals
SSKM, RG Kar and Calcutta Medical College and Hospital were briefly hit by the outage. Power snapped around 9.55am but the generators restored supply a little after 10am, said officials. Some wards at SSKM did not have power for more than 15 minutes, sources said. Private hospitals were largely unaffected.
Traffic signals
Traffic along the entire stretch of the Bypass from Ultadanga till the Ruby rotary slowed down after the signals stopped blinking around 9.55am. Senior officers called the traffic control room in Lalbazar to confirm if there was a snag before asking their teams to manage traffic with hand signals. Maniktala Main Road, Rashbehari and Park Street were affected too.
