Delhi dust storm: Flights diverted, Metro routes disrupted: New Delhi, May 30: A massive dust storm and heavy rainfall hit the national capital on Friday evening. Several trees and electric poles were uprooted, leading to disruption in power supply and traffic jams and chaos on roads. At least 18 domestic and one international Delhi-bound flights were diverted to nearby airports following today’s dust storm. Metro train services were also disrupted today for about an hour due to power failure caused by the storm during, inconveniencing thousands of commuters. Metro services were disrupted due to failure/erratic power supply from Delhi Transco Limited (DTL) to Delhi Metros receiving sub stations (RSS) across the network, which in turn feed power to Metro system for running the trains and stations, said Anuj Dayal, DMRC Executive Director (Corporate Communications). At some locations including Janakpuri and Inderlok material like tin sheet and pipes got entangled into the OHE (Overhead Electrification Wire) due to the dust storm, making train movement impossible. Passengers were stranded at various metro stations and even asked to de-board the trains at various locations until normal power supply was resumed. The train services, however, resumed from 6 PM onward after resumption of power supply from DTL and clearance of all material from the OHE wire by DMRC engineers. However, even after normal services were restored, it took a lot of time to clear the backlog of stranded passengers. Long queues were seen at metro stations. From a sunny afternoon, the sky turned dark by approximately 5 pm today. The Met department had predicted a cloudy evening, but the weather, which has mostly been extremely hot this week, made a dramatic change. Todays rains brought some respite to the people here. Mercury touched the maximum temperature yesterday which was recorded three degrees above the average at 43.7 degrees Celsius, making it the seasons hottest day so far. Though the rainfall cooled down the climate a bit, it has not really helped in recharging the underground water table.
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 18:48:30 +0000
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