In the dark: Up to 16-hour outage as grid station catches fire

LAHORE:

The Lahore Electric Supply Company’s (LESCO) engineering staff restored on Saturday the electricity of all areas that faced up to 16 hours of power outage due to a fire at the Johar Town grid station on Friday night.

Fire broke out at the grid station around 9pm, as eight feeders tripped due to overloading. Four grids were completely destroyed while four others were partially damaged.

Residents of Johar Town were most affected as they faced power outage for up to 16 hours. Adjacent areas including Wapda Town, Valencia Town, PIA Housing Society, some areas of Model Town, the Punjab University campus, and the PCSIR Colony were affected as well.

Electricity in some of these areas was restored after four to five hours. LESCO Chief Muhammad Saleem said the Johar Town grid has 24 feeders. Saleem said that LESCO was building another grid station to ease the load as power demand in the area it served had grown rapidly.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2013.