West Bengal: Mission turnaround after Amphan misery

An Army unit in Salt Lake on Saturday.
KOLKATA: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s direct intervention and the joint action by central and state agencies on the ground seemed to have brought about a sense of normality in large parts of the city on Sunday, with several areas getting back basic services and many city thoroughfares — un-navigable till Saturday — seeing traffic movement.

Several thousand households, both in the CESC and WBSEDCL coverage zones, got back electricity on Sunday. CESC reported to the state that large swathes of south Kolkata, some in north Kolkata and the rest in Howrah were back on the grid; WBSEDCL reported that 213 of its 272 sub-stations could be revived. As many as 60,000 more homes got back electricity on Sunday, said CESC. On Saturday, the chief minister, sensing the mood in the city, had stepped in by going herself to the CESC headquarters to speak to senior executives.

With electricity back more than 90 hours after Cyclone Amphan passed through the city, the water crisis also eased somewhat, with booster pumping stations that had suffered power outage restored. Several parts of the city, however, still faced problems. These pockets witnessed sporadic protests for the third day straight. If, however, the number of protests can be seen an as index of dissatisfaction, it pointed to anger subsiding in many pockets. Sun-day’s protests were reported from three south Kolkata zones, mostly in Behala. The others were Baghajatin Bazar and Sree Colony in Jadavpur and Baruipur-Narendrapur in the southern suburbs. Army units were deployed in Behala, along with police, KMC and Fire Brigade personnel to speed up restoration work.

KMC said on Sunday that 15,000 trees had fallen across the city (three times its initial estimate), around 40% of those full-grown. The five columns of the Army’s Kumaon Regiment resumed work after helping clear Southern Avenue, Ballygunge Circular Road and Gurusaday Road. On Sunday, along with Behala, Army units were deployed on Diamond Harbour Road and Salt Lake. NDRF teams cleared parts of Esplanade, Red Road, Harish Mukherjee Street and some locations in Dhakuria.

KMC chairperson Firhad Hakim said Kolkata’s arterial thoroughfares had been cleared for vehicular movement. However, bottlenecks remained.

Mobile service providers and broadband operators, how-ever, failed to provide any time-frame about clearing voice and data logjam. Cable TV screens have been flickering in and out of life across the city, even as wires kept getting snapped in eff-orts to remove uprooted trees. Services remain suspended across most of south, east and north Kolkata; numerous pockets where it had been restored suffered another blackout on Sunday as efforts to remove road debris were stepped up.