Shopian: With almost three feet snowfall in most upper areas of Shopian and Pulwama districts in south Kashmir, normal life was disrupted in the twin districts on Wednesday. It will take more than 24 hours to fully restore electricity in both the districts, Power department officials say, as in Shopian faults have developed in transmission lines because of snow and more than 80 percent of the district areas are without electricity.
The mechanical department is on the job of removing snow from roads, but due to breakdown of machinery in some cases and having to attend to distress calls on priority, officials of the department say that the process will take 12 more hours to fully restore the priority first roads in both the districts.
Many of the roads in Keller, Sedow, Imamsahib, Sangarwani, Bamnoo and other areas of Pulwama and Shopian are yet to cleared of snow.
Muhammad Irfan, Assistant Executive Engineer at the Mechanical Engineering department, told Kashmir Reader that the department attended to about 20 distress calls in the two districts besides 25 more calls where patients were rescued from snow-bound areas.
He said that till 4pm a total of 200 kilometers of priority first roads were cleared while 250 kilometers were cleared in priority second roads. In Shopian 200 kilometers were cleared under priority first and 50 kilometers in priority second, he said.
“We will continue clearance operations the whole night. Breakdown of a few machines, trees, poles and wires resulted in delay, though we brought some machines from other districts,” Irfan said, adding that by Thursday 4pm every single road in both the districts will be motorable.
The drinking water supply was also affected in most of the areas in district Shopian as well as in many parts of Pulwama due to accumulation of snow in reservoirs which blocked the pipelines. Once the electricity went out, the water supply was disrupted in more areas.
Since Tuesday night almost the whole of Shopian is without electricity as most of the power lines have developed faults.
Abdul Rasheed, engineer at the Power department, said that it will take them more than 24 hours to restore the services. “Shopian and half of Pulwama weren’t so affected by tower damage but the lines to grid station were faulty. We have restored 20 percent electricity in Shopian, 70 percent in Pampore, 30 percent in Tral and 50 percent in Pulwama,” he said, adding that once the recieving stations get charged the electricity will be supplied to areas.

Raashid Hassan