The snowfall during the intervening night of Friday and Saturday caused power breakdown in majority of the areas across the Valley with north and south Kashmir areas among the most affected.
Parts of Srinagar mostly on the outskirts also faced power outage on Saturday morning. The officials however said that power in most of the areas across Kashmir was restored by Saturday noon.
“As we started the day (Saturday) only 30 percent of the power load was up in the morning leaving a power outage of 70 percent. As soon as the department pressed its men and machinery into action, power in most of the areas was restored by noon. The department achieved 60 to 75 percent restoration in the areas that were cut off,” a KPDCL official said.
“The most affected areas remained Shopian, Kupwara, central Kashmir areas and mostly remote areas of north and south Kashmir districts,” he said. Officials said that the full power restoration was archived in Srinagar in the morning itself. “However there are some pockets on the outskirts where the restoration is going on and will be completed before the evening,” the official said.
As per the official data, the power load in the morning across the valley had dropped to 400 MWs only indicating that there was outage of over 1000 MWs.
While talking to Greater Kashmir, Chief Engineer, KPDCL, Aijaz Ahmed Dar said at 3 am “our teams left to restore the power. Our first priority is always essential services and then the rest of the areas.”
Dar said that they had completed the majority of the restoration by noon and “only 20 to 30 percent of the areas were yet to get the supply”. He said that they will “achieve around 90 percent of the restoration” by the evening.
He said that there was no major damage reported in any infrastructure in the distribution network. “There are only few places where few lines and poles were damaged in which restoration was going on,” he said.