Power, telephone connectivity paralysed in Solan

Tribune News Service

Solan, December 15

Power supply and telephone connectivity remained paralysed for several hours throughout the district with rain and lightening causing major damage to the equipments.

The area surrounding Kasauli was plunged into darkness for nearly 12 hours since last evening. People had a tough time beating the cold with no power supply and resorted to burning fire in the open using wood or coal.

Dheeraj Mittal, Superintending Engineer of the HP State Electricity Board Limited, said the field staff had been on the job and trying to restore the damage spread across the district.

He said nearly 25 to 30 feeders had been damaged owing to lightening. Apart from this, heavy rain had also uprooted trees, damaging polls at a few places. Apart from two feeders lying in the interior areas of Chail, nearly all feeders had been restored. Disruption of cellular connectivity also acted as a deterrent in repairing the damage as little information could be exchanged between the field staff and the technical men, he added.

It was, however, learnt that supply to Barog was yet to be restored and the interior area of Sirmaur, comprising about 30 panchayats of Haripurdhar and Nohradhar, were without power for more than 24 hours.

The rain accompanied with lightening led to disruption of broadband modems and other electronic items of individual users too, said Naresh Kumar, a dealer of electronic items at Solan, who was flooded with calls for repair work.

With more than 100 towers developing a snag, the BSNL services were severally affected in the entire Solan Switching Area, comprising Solan and Sirmaur districts, where users could not use cell phones for several hours. Connectivity was affected in areas like Basal, Subathu, Arki, Kasauli, Jagjitnagar, Nahan, Naina Tikker, etc.