Electricity Returns to Bangladesh After Power Failure
DHAKA, Bangladesh - A power failure swept through Bangladesh on Saturday after a transmission line in the electrical grid failed, causing a nationwide blackout.
Masum-Al-Beruni, managing director of the state-run Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, said that 'the whole of Bangladesh' was 'completely out of power' for an hour on Saturday, though the effects of the electrical failure continued well into the evening. The blackout began around 11:30 a.m., Mr. Beruni said, and by 5 p.m. about a quarter of the coverage area had been restored.
Saiful Hasan Chowdhury, the director for public relations with the Bangladesh Power Development Board, said Saturday night that by 9:30 p.m. half the coverage area had been restored.
Mr. Beruni said that it was too soon to know the exact cause of the power failure, but that the line that had failed had affected the entire grid.
Workers at the Power Grid Company, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media, said that a substation in Bheramara, in the Kushtia district, which has been transmitting electricity from India since 2013, failed to receive power and shut down on Saturday.
The first priorities for the restoration of power, Mr. Beruni said, were hospitals, the airport and the homes of the prime minister and the president.
Power failures are common in Bangladesh, and more than a third of the country's roughly 160 million people lack access to electricity. This power failure was the biggest since 2007, when a cyclone ripped through the country and caused a blackout for several hours.
Some hospitals were affected by the blackout. Shah Alam, 47, said he traveled 20 miles to the hospital at the Bangbandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University in Dhaka on Saturday for medical tests, but hospital workers turned him away, informing him that the equipment needed for the tests was not working because of the power failure.
Employees at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the largest public hospital in the country, said on Saturday that they were running the hospital on generators that were providing electricity to enable the staff to care for the neediest patients.
Many of the large residential and commercial buildings in Bangladesh run on generators because of the frequent blackouts, and residents in urban areas rushed to fuel stations on Saturday for fuel to power their generators.
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