Thousands of people were trapped underground for 15 minutes and with bare minimum power supply and no fresh air supply as Metro rail services in Kolkata were halted on Thursday morning. The incident was blamed on a disruption in power supply to the Metro rail services.
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The weekday office traffic, coupled with sweltering heat in Kolkata — which is already showing signs of a really hot summer — and the humid weather that signals imminent unseasonal rain only added to the discomfiture of the passengers as only a handful of the trains were stranded at the stations and most others were halted on tracks.
Local reports said the stoppage in power supply lasted from 9.53 am to 10.08 am, but was long enough for people in some sections to start panicking. Some of the trains managed to somehow maintain their momentum and come to a halt at stations. With the doors of the non-AC compartments opening, passengers spilt onto the stations and waited with anxiousness. The situation was worse for passengers stuck within the AC compartments, with the air starting to turn warm.
The power cut was ascribed to a massive supply failure on behalf of the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC). Sources within the power supply company were quoted by local reports as saying that three of its units at the Budge Budge power station — each capable of supplying 700 MW of power — had developed some technical snag, which resulted in the massive power cut.
All three units of the CESC were brought back online within 15 minutes — which is how long the power cut lasted. And it affected not just people underground but overground as well: Several traffic signals running on power supplied from these units went dark across Kolkata, leading to traffic snarls that required significantly more than 15 minutes to sort out.
