KARACHI: Most of the city plunged into darkness at around 5am on Friday when the 500kV Hub-Jamshoro transmission line tripped because of dense fog.

The line is part of the National Transmission and Despatch Company’s distribution system.

As a result of the outage, the Defence Housing Authority, Clifton, Saddar, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Tariq Road, Sharea Faisal, Gulshan-i-Maymar, Buffer Zone, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Safoora Goth, Steel Town, Shadman Town, Gurumandir, Lasbela, Liaquatabad, Lyari, Ranchore Line, Shah Latif Town and Federal B Area remained the worst affected.

According to a K-Electric spokesperson, restoration work started immediately after the tripping and most of the grids were brought back on line within a few hours. This was made possible thanks to alternative supply from the 220kV KDA/Jamshoro transmission line.

Work for restoration of supply to strategic installations such as the airport, major hospitals and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board’s pumping stations was carried out as a priority.

A statement issued by the KE later said supply to most of the residential and commercial areas was restored within a short span of time although Dawn kept receiving complaints about people missing a phase or two or voltage fluctuations till late evening.

The KE apologised to its consumers for the inconvenience, while promising to look into any issues in their areas.

Reuters adds: The breakdown left about 90 per cent of the city without electricity and brought much of normal life to a standstill.

The third major outage of the country’s electricity grid within a month forced shops, hospitals and businesses to turn to back-up generators.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2016