Fayaz Bukhari
SRINAGAR, Nov 20: In a major fire that is still raging since morning, the recently commissioned 240 Megawatt Uri-II power house near the Line of Control (LoC) was destroyed, adding to the power woes for Kashmir valley during winter.
The Deputy Commissioner Baramulla, Farooq Ahmad Lone, told Excelsior that the power house suffered major damage in the fire and it will take several months to make it operational again. “Majority of the equipment has to be imported and it will take several months to restore it”, he added.
Lone said that fire broke out at around 6 a.m. and 10 employees of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) who were on shift duty were rescued. He said that the fire tenders were brought from Baramulla and Srinagar to douse the flames. He said that Army also rushed its firefighting equipment to the power house to douse the fires.
The DC said that fire is under control and it may take few hours to extinguish it. He said that initially it looks the cause of fire is due to short-circuit. “Ultimately investigations will determine what caused the fire”, he added. He said that officials went inside power project after massive firefighting but smoke is still spewing.
The Uri-II power project was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 4. The Power House was to be inaugurated by the former PM Dr Manmohan Singh last year but it was cancelled as there was seepage inside the power house.
The power house that was operational since July could have eased out the power crisis of Kashmir during this winters. The power house constructed by the Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) with 60 MW four units was designed to generate 1124 million units per year.
An Army spokesman said here that a major fire broke out in the morning at National Hydro Electric Project (Uri- II) at about 0630 hours due to some technical snag in the main transformer of the Hydro Electric Project .
“Army was approached by the Civil administration at 0730 hours. Immediately Army troops came into action along with civil administration and controlled the spread of major fire tragedy in National Hydro Electric Project (Uri- II) and saved precious lives and property worth lakhs of rupees. Within an hour of hard work, the fire was doused in places easily accessible, however there were places that could not be immediately reached”, the spokesman said.
The spokesman said that no loss of life was reported, however, fire caused major infrastructural damage to the National Hydro Electric Project (Uri- II). “The prompt actions of the Army fire fighting team and civil authorities by providing fire fighting assistance resulted in controlling the spread of fire, thereby saving the precious life’s and minimizing the damage to the property. Till last reports the fire fighting teams were trying to control the fire in the inaccessible parts of the National Hydro Electric Project (Uri- II)”, he added.
A police spokesman said that police facilitated the evacuation of the employees from the power house.
The local lawmaker and Health Minister, Taj Mohi-ud-Din, was always apprehensive about the project. He had been alleging that the substandard material was being used in the construction of this project.
The Minister demanded high level inquiry into the fire and sub-standard material that was used in the construction of the power house. “The Engineers and the construction company used substandard material for its construction. I raised this issue several times but the no one paid any heed”, he said.
Taj Mohi-ud-Din said that project faced several problems during its construction but the NHPC authorities turned a blind eye towards it. “First there was leakage in the tunnel. Then there was seepage inside the power house”, he said.
The Minister said that losses could be between Rs 200-300 crore. He said that national loss and people have every right to know what went wrong. He said that the NHPC authorities feel that they are Empire in itself never paid attention to his apprehensions.
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