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SPDCL staff in cyclone-hit areas to go up to 6,000

October 19, 2014 09:38 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 04:03 pm IST - VIJAYAWADA:

Hundreds of them leave for the port city to help their counterparts. Exactly a week after the cyclone ripped through the port city, thousands of technical personnel of EPDCL and SPDCL are working from early morning to 9 p.m. every day to restore normalcy.

Teams of workers from AP SPDCL restoring damaged power lines in Visakhapatnam on Saturday. Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam

Power restoration work in the cyclone-hit north Andhra districts has become such a gigantic task that the Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (SPDCL) alone deployed more than 6,000 officers/engineers and staff, most of them from Vijayawada Zone, in Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts.

Hundreds of them left for the port city on Saturday also to help their counterparts in the Visakhapatnam-based eastern DISCOM in repairing a large number of sub-stations and other infrastructure which suffered extensive damage.

It is like ‘double work’ as most of the equipment, transmission lines and poles have to be removed and replaced with brand new ones. Such was the trail of destruction that the super cyclone left in its wake in the three north Andhra districts.

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About 1,000 officers/engineers and workers from SPDCL were rushed to Visakhapatnam on October 13 and 14 and additional workforce continued to be requisitioned till date as the magnitude of the task became apparent with each passing day.

Exactly a week after the cyclone ripped through the port city, thousands of technical personnel of EPDCL and SPDCL are working from early morning to 9 p.m. every day to restore normalcy. SPDCL Chief Engineer (Vijayawada Zone) K. Rajabapaiah told The Hindu that the lack of mobile communication facility in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone was a stumbling block. Senior engineers had to move from one place to another by road to inspect the damages as the field – level staff could not be contacted through phone. However, things improved after the telecommunication network was repaired.

Getting the Simhadri Thermal Power Plant to resume generation was a major task.

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In addition to the Chief Engineer of Vijayawada Zone, two superintending engineers (of Guntur and Prakasam districts) and seven divisional engineers are still camping in the cyclone-affected areas and more workers are likely to be sent in the coming days as the restoration works are taking a massive effort.

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