Over 50,000 consumers in Sylhet continued to remain without electricity until Thursday evening, 58 hours after a fire at a power sub-station at Kumargaon caused a massive power outage in the district and adjacent areas bringing life to an abrupt halt.

The long hours of power outages also triggered water shortage, disrupted operations of public and private offices and hampered health services.

Hospitals were the worst victims of the power failure  while internet services and mobile network were also disrupted.

Initially the power outage affected at least 17 lakh people in Sylhet, Byanibazar, Sunamganj and Chhatak and the supply was restored in most of the areas until Thursday evening.

‘Power supply was restored in 97 per cent of the areas until Thursday evening and the rest will be restored as soon as possible,’ PDB’s public relation director Saiful Hasan Chowdhury told New Age.

The people who were suffering for the power outage till Thursday evening are the consumers of the Power Development Board in Sylhet city.

Power Grid Company of Bangladesh executive director Yakub Elahi Chowdhury said that the fire had damaged transformers at the sub-station, which were repaired in the early hours of Wednesday, and that the cause of the fire was still unknown and was under investigation.

United News of Bangladesh reported that the residents of Jallarpar, Mirzajangal, Dariapara, Lamabazar, Rikabibazar, Dakkhin Surma, suburb areas and different upazilas remained without power till Thursday afternoon as the authorities failed to restore power in those areas.

Power Division officials said that they were able to restore power supply in some important areas of the city through a rationing system.

PDB (sales and distribution) Chief Engineer in Sylhet, Khandaker Mokammel Hossain in the afternoon said that workers were still repairing the gridline.

The fire broke out in Sylhet’s Kumargaon Power Plant at around 11:00am on Tuesday.

Sylhet Fire Service and Civil Defence were able to put out the flames, but its two transformers and a control panel had been damaged, leaving the entire Sylhet district and parts of its adjoining areas without power.