KARACHI: Power supply to a large part of Karachi’s central district was disrupted for hours after a fire broke out at a K-Electric grid station in Federal B Area on Saturday afternoon.

Due to the grid station fire, some 50 power feeders were affected and as a result several areas in Azizabad, Dastagir, North Nazimabad and other parts of Federal B Area were deprived of power.

The KE remained tightlipped over the cause of the fire and the duration of the firefighting operation.

However, officials at the Sohrab Goth fire station said that it took them around one hour to put out the fire. “We received the distress call at 12.05pm on Saturday and our trucks returned after putting out the fire by 1.13pm,” said an official.

“Initially it was a small fire in the KE transmission circuit that exploded into a much bigger fire. We were able to save three transmission circuits while putting out the fire while one was completely destroyed,” he told Dawn.

A spokesman for the KE said that the fire brigade was able to control and put out the fire, which he said broke out due to technical reasons.

He said besides the Federal B Area grid, the fire also affected the Surjani Town and Maymar grid stations. However, he said, soon after KE’s engineers were able to restore power to Gulshan-i-Maymar and Surjani Town through backfeeding from alternative sources.

He said that 50 feeders and areas including Azizabad, Dastagir, North Nazimabad and Federal B Area were affected due to the grid station fire.

“The repair work would take around eight hours to complete. KE regrets any inconvenience caused to its consumers and requests their cooperation,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, residents of the affected localities faced hardship and agony due to the prolonged power breakdown in the hot and humid weather.

“The outage began at Saturday noon and soon after when I complained I received a message on the phone informing me of the fire that KE teams were hard at work fixing the problem,” said Sohaib Inam, a resident of F B Area.

“But it wasn’t fixed till 4pm when our UPS stopped working. And now we are completely without power and looking towards KE to fix it as soon as possible. Many things come to mind about this power utility failing its consumers so badly during this extremely hot weather and it being Ramazan, too. But what can I say. If I start cursing them, I think my fast would break,” the gentleman, who seemed to be used to extended power outages, added.

Syed Mehdi Hasan Shah, another resident from the same area, said that one of the three phases of his house was not working for several days along with an ongoing fluctuation issue beside this grid station fire.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2015

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