LAHORE: People in various localities spent the whole night without electricity after over 400 11kV feeders tripped due to the heavy windstorm and rain in Lahore and adjoining areas on Thursday night. The bad weather situation also caused massive loss to Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) as a large number of poles, wires, transformers and trees fell on ground, leading to hourslong power disruption in many areas.

`We spent the whole night without electricity. At 5am, the power was restored and we all slept at around 5:30am or so,` said a consumer residing at a locality on Walton Road while talking to Dawn on Friday.

`It was a terrible night,` he added.

Talking to Dawn, a resident of Johar Town narrated the similar ordeal, stating that hours-long power suspensionleft everythingidle.

`The situation worsened after our UPS (uninterruptible power supply) failed due to constant electricity supply suspension. I contacted almost the officials concerned twice or thrice, but they reported the presence of the teams at feeders` sites in a bid to restore power supply,` he said while talking to this reporter.

He said since the weather situation was already bad, the heavy cloudbursts frightened everyone, especially the children while they were asleep near the windows opened for having air in absence of light.

`My small kids woke up and started crying due to the thunder of cloudbursts,` he said.

On the other hand, the Lesco field formations could hardly restore electricity to many areas till Friday morning after hours-long power restoring operation.

`The heavy windstorm and rain affected our operations badly, tripping 400 feeders and depriving a number of areas of electricity,` said Lesco Chief Executive Officer Ramzan Butt while talking to this reporter. He said the windstorm was very powerful. To a ques-tion, he said the windstorm and rain uprooted several trees and poles and they fell on transmission wires and transformers, tripping the feeders besides blocking various roads.

`Our all field formations worked whole the night in a bid to restore power by removing the trees that had fallen on transmission lines or transformers or cutting them and energizing the feeders one by one,` Mr Butt said, adding that the rain alone could not trip such a number of feeders but it was windstorm that caused such a situation.

He said the windstorm not only damaged the Lesco power distribution system (11kV lines and 132kV lines and grid stations) but also affected the 220kV power supply system of the National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC). `Our most officers/officials, including myself, slept for few hours on Friday after restoring power supply to the consumers,` the Lesco CEO said, requesting the consumers to adopt precautionary measures by staying away from the wires, poles etc, especially during such a weather conditions, in a bid to avert any untoward event.