Thundershower leads to outages in Noida, Gzb

Noida: The first showers of the onset of summer led to widespread power cuts across Noida and Ghaziabad on Friday. The outages that lasted from one hour to over three hours continued well past 9pm in both cities. As strong winds hit the twin cities in the NCR region after 6pm, several trees and branches fell across residential sectors 28, 29, 37 and 55. An 11,000 kV pole fell near Chetram Hospital in Sector 63. Similar complaints were reported from parts of Ghaziabad, including Vaishali, Raj Nagar Extension (RNE) and Indirapuram. A tin shed of a shop in Bhelolpur near Sector 63 fell on power cables, while a hoarding fell on power cables in Bhojpur, Modinagar in Ghaziabad. A power official said preventive shutdown was carried out across most substations. "This was done to ensure no damage is done to infra repair works," chief engineer, Noida power department, Harish Bansal said. tnn