Let there be light, says Delhi
31 July 2012 2:37 PM IST
OVER 9,000 SURGERIES DELAYED ALL OVER CAPITAL
Unprecedented power cut on Monday disrupted work in hospitals, with more than 9,000 surgeries being postponed across the city. City hospitals witnessed a chaotic situation with the functioning of the diagnostic laboratories, intensive care units (ICU) and emergency and trauma services being affected.
Patients and their attendants looked tired as they stood in long queues at the central laboratory at the Lady Hardinge hospital. In emergency ward too, registration of patients was being done manually as computers were shut down.
Power cut during the night caused disruption of sterilisation procedures in many of the city hospitals forcing delay or rescheduling of surgeries in the morning.
‘Before surgery, equipment must be sterlised and the procedure is conducted 4-6 hours prior to the surgery,’ a doctor at LNJP hospital said.
Though most hospitals have power back up, the sterilisation procedure demands high consumption of electricity, which could not be executed in time because of the power failure.
A hospital official, who did not wish to be named, said almost 20 surgeries were delayed at Lady Hardinge hospital, which crippled the surgery department. Many of the radiological examinations in Ram Manohar Lohia hospital and Lok Nayak hospitals could not be conducted because of the power failure.
The patients who required X-ray and CT scan reports were sent back due to the cut.
‘We were told to come this morning but lack of power supply left us in the lurch. We have not had food for the last several hours due to the operation and we have been waiting for the resumption of power supply for the last two hours,’ claimed Sudheer and Rihaan, patients at Sucheta Kriplani hospital.
BLAME GAME ON
After hours of blackout due to a breakdown of the Northern Grid early Monday, power supply was restored to almost 80 per cent areas of Delhi by noon, officials said. Delhi blamed Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh for overdrawing power that caused the grid’s collapse.
‘At 2.33 am, the frequency was very low at Northern Grid and it collapsed. Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh were drawing between 2,500 and 3,000 mega-watts,’ Delhi’s Power Minister Haroon Yusuf said. Power supply was also hit in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Jammu and Kashmir. Yusuf also said by 4 am, electricity was restored at Delhi airport, the Prime Minister’s House, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
‘In the last ten years, this was an unprecedented power failure and we will make sure that such outages do not occur in future,’ Yusuf said. According to union Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, nearly 60 per cent of electricity supply was restored by early morning and efforts were going on to restore the power supply ‘on a war footing’. The power outage led to an acute water problem across Delhi with taps running dry.
Power failure put the traffic signals on a blink, causing massive traffic jams during peak office hours.
According to a Northern Railway spokesperson, nearly 100 trains were disrupted but traffic was back to normal by 8 am. Around 45 local trains in Delhi were also affected. ‘Vital services and VIP areas were first provided power, and most of the services have now been restored,’ a BSES official said.
CITY’S LIFELINE SNAPS
Delhi Metro's train schedule went haywire in the morning hours on Monday due to largescale disruption in services owing to a major power failure in the Northern Grid, affecting thousands of passengers who were stranded at various stations. Services on all six corridors were affected for most part of the morning as trains could not be taken out of depots due to power failure causing severe inconvenience to thousands of commuters who rely on the modern transport system to reach their work places.
Metro services began only at 7 am as against the usual 6 am and only 25 per cent of trains were put in service for the first 90 minutes after which others were inducted gradually. Thousands of commuters were stranded outside and inside Metro stations as they desperately waited for trains though there were constant announcements about the delay and the cause for it. As majority of the trains were taken off services in the morning due to power failure, the frequency of trains dropped to an all-time low of 20 minutes on a few corridors.
‘Between 7-9 am, all trains were inducted into passenger services in a phased manner. Regular services were made available on all Metro lines from 9 am onwards,’ Delhi Metro spokesman Anuj Dayal said. However, passengers alleged that the train frequency was very less till noon.
TRAINS STRUT TO A HALT
Around 1.5 lakh passengers in 300 trains suffered delays as the power grid failure crippled operations across eight divisions of the northern railway Monday, while 200 goods trains were cancelled, said railway officials.
The cancellation of goods trains, in order to accord priority to movement of the stalled passenger trains, resulted in a revenue loss of over Rs 100 crore, officials said.
According to the railways, electricity supply to the network has been restored in most places but many trains, including the prestigious Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and express trains, were still running hours behind their schedules.
‘Operations are normal but several trains are running late... we are trying to cope with the crisis,’ Anil Saxena, additional director general, public relations in the railway ministry, said.
‘We can’t make up for the loss but we are trying to restore normalcy.’
According to railway officials, some of the delayed trains included the Kolkata-Giridih Lal Quila Express which was late by 11 hours, the Sitamarhi-Anand Vihar Lichchavi Express (7 hours late), the Dibrugarh-Delhi Brahmputra Mail (late by 7 hours 45 minutes), the Allahabad-New Delhi Prayag Raj Express (late 5 hours), the Chennai-New Delhi Grand Trunk Express (6 and a half hours) and the Indore-Jammu Tawi Malwa Express (five-and-a-half hours).
Officials said the northern power grid failure hit the train operations at around 2.30 am.
Though power supply was partially restored by 6 am when additional electricity was obtained from the Dadri power plant near Delhi, the situation reached near-normalcy only by 7 am, said officials.
Power supply was also arranged from areas not affected by the grid failure and in some places, diesel engines were deployed to pull the trains, they said.
‘Senior managers are monitoring the situation along with technical staff and are in touch with power suppliers,’ said Saxena.
He said that in order to ensure safety and security of the passengers, who suffered due to delay in train operations in the early morning hours, the railways had also deployed Railway Protection Force and coordinated with the local police across the Northern Railway network.
POWER FAILURE SPARES FLIGHT OPERATIONS
As the entire North India suffered its worst ever power failure in the last 10 years on Monday, the flight operations were fortunately spared. Even as life in eight states, including the national capital, was paralysed for over 15 hours, the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) confirmed that operations at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) were absolutely normal and there were no cancellations or delays.
Reportedly, the entire load of the airport was restored within 15-60 seconds. This was made possible by an extensive arrangement of power back-up and multiple redundancies put in place by DIAL .
As soon as the power supply showed fluctuations, the ‘main receiving sub-station’ (MRSS) at IGIA ensured that the generators automatically took the load. Although the power supply from the Discom partially resumed at 8.33 am , as a precautionary measure, DIAL kept the load on generators till 1.08 pm, so that possibilities of grid fluctuations could be ruled out.
The emergency generators are designed to take much more than the assigned load so that passenger movement and air traffic movement are not affected. The total installed capacity at IGIA is 59.5 MW, where the capacity is well in excess of the actual load.
Unprecedented power cut on Monday disrupted work in hospitals, with more than 9,000 surgeries being postponed across the city. City hospitals witnessed a chaotic situation with the functioning of the diagnostic laboratories, intensive care units (ICU) and emergency and trauma services being affected.
Patients and their attendants looked tired as they stood in long queues at the central laboratory at the Lady Hardinge hospital. In emergency ward too, registration of patients was being done manually as computers were shut down.
Power cut during the night caused disruption of sterilisation procedures in many of the city hospitals forcing delay or rescheduling of surgeries in the morning.
‘Before surgery, equipment must be sterlised and the procedure is conducted 4-6 hours prior to the surgery,’ a doctor at LNJP hospital said.
Though most hospitals have power back up, the sterilisation procedure demands high consumption of electricity, which could not be executed in time because of the power failure.
A hospital official, who did not wish to be named, said almost 20 surgeries were delayed at Lady Hardinge hospital, which crippled the surgery department. Many of the radiological examinations in Ram Manohar Lohia hospital and Lok Nayak hospitals could not be conducted because of the power failure.
The patients who required X-ray and CT scan reports were sent back due to the cut.
‘We were told to come this morning but lack of power supply left us in the lurch. We have not had food for the last several hours due to the operation and we have been waiting for the resumption of power supply for the last two hours,’ claimed Sudheer and Rihaan, patients at Sucheta Kriplani hospital.
BLAME GAME ON
After hours of blackout due to a breakdown of the Northern Grid early Monday, power supply was restored to almost 80 per cent areas of Delhi by noon, officials said. Delhi blamed Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh for overdrawing power that caused the grid’s collapse.
‘At 2.33 am, the frequency was very low at Northern Grid and it collapsed. Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh were drawing between 2,500 and 3,000 mega-watts,’ Delhi’s Power Minister Haroon Yusuf said. Power supply was also hit in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Jammu and Kashmir. Yusuf also said by 4 am, electricity was restored at Delhi airport, the Prime Minister’s House, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
‘In the last ten years, this was an unprecedented power failure and we will make sure that such outages do not occur in future,’ Yusuf said. According to union Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, nearly 60 per cent of electricity supply was restored by early morning and efforts were going on to restore the power supply ‘on a war footing’. The power outage led to an acute water problem across Delhi with taps running dry.
Power failure put the traffic signals on a blink, causing massive traffic jams during peak office hours.
According to a Northern Railway spokesperson, nearly 100 trains were disrupted but traffic was back to normal by 8 am. Around 45 local trains in Delhi were also affected. ‘Vital services and VIP areas were first provided power, and most of the services have now been restored,’ a BSES official said.
CITY’S LIFELINE SNAPS
Delhi Metro's train schedule went haywire in the morning hours on Monday due to largescale disruption in services owing to a major power failure in the Northern Grid, affecting thousands of passengers who were stranded at various stations. Services on all six corridors were affected for most part of the morning as trains could not be taken out of depots due to power failure causing severe inconvenience to thousands of commuters who rely on the modern transport system to reach their work places.
Metro services began only at 7 am as against the usual 6 am and only 25 per cent of trains were put in service for the first 90 minutes after which others were inducted gradually. Thousands of commuters were stranded outside and inside Metro stations as they desperately waited for trains though there were constant announcements about the delay and the cause for it. As majority of the trains were taken off services in the morning due to power failure, the frequency of trains dropped to an all-time low of 20 minutes on a few corridors.
‘Between 7-9 am, all trains were inducted into passenger services in a phased manner. Regular services were made available on all Metro lines from 9 am onwards,’ Delhi Metro spokesman Anuj Dayal said. However, passengers alleged that the train frequency was very less till noon.
TRAINS STRUT TO A HALT
Around 1.5 lakh passengers in 300 trains suffered delays as the power grid failure crippled operations across eight divisions of the northern railway Monday, while 200 goods trains were cancelled, said railway officials.
The cancellation of goods trains, in order to accord priority to movement of the stalled passenger trains, resulted in a revenue loss of over Rs 100 crore, officials said.
According to the railways, electricity supply to the network has been restored in most places but many trains, including the prestigious Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and express trains, were still running hours behind their schedules.
‘Operations are normal but several trains are running late... we are trying to cope with the crisis,’ Anil Saxena, additional director general, public relations in the railway ministry, said.
‘We can’t make up for the loss but we are trying to restore normalcy.’
According to railway officials, some of the delayed trains included the Kolkata-Giridih Lal Quila Express which was late by 11 hours, the Sitamarhi-Anand Vihar Lichchavi Express (7 hours late), the Dibrugarh-Delhi Brahmputra Mail (late by 7 hours 45 minutes), the Allahabad-New Delhi Prayag Raj Express (late 5 hours), the Chennai-New Delhi Grand Trunk Express (6 and a half hours) and the Indore-Jammu Tawi Malwa Express (five-and-a-half hours).
Officials said the northern power grid failure hit the train operations at around 2.30 am.
Though power supply was partially restored by 6 am when additional electricity was obtained from the Dadri power plant near Delhi, the situation reached near-normalcy only by 7 am, said officials.
Power supply was also arranged from areas not affected by the grid failure and in some places, diesel engines were deployed to pull the trains, they said.
‘Senior managers are monitoring the situation along with technical staff and are in touch with power suppliers,’ said Saxena.
He said that in order to ensure safety and security of the passengers, who suffered due to delay in train operations in the early morning hours, the railways had also deployed Railway Protection Force and coordinated with the local police across the Northern Railway network.
POWER FAILURE SPARES FLIGHT OPERATIONS
As the entire North India suffered its worst ever power failure in the last 10 years on Monday, the flight operations were fortunately spared. Even as life in eight states, including the national capital, was paralysed for over 15 hours, the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) confirmed that operations at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) were absolutely normal and there were no cancellations or delays.
Reportedly, the entire load of the airport was restored within 15-60 seconds. This was made possible by an extensive arrangement of power back-up and multiple redundancies put in place by DIAL .
As soon as the power supply showed fluctuations, the ‘main receiving sub-station’ (MRSS) at IGIA ensured that the generators automatically took the load. Although the power supply from the Discom partially resumed at 8.33 am , as a precautionary measure, DIAL kept the load on generators till 1.08 pm, so that possibilities of grid fluctuations could be ruled out.
The emergency generators are designed to take much more than the assigned load so that passenger movement and air traffic movement are not affected. The total installed capacity at IGIA is 59.5 MW, where the capacity is well in excess of the actual load.
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