Fog causes long power breakdown

ISLAMABAD: The power transmission lines of 500KV and 220KV tripped at Guddu-Dadu in the wee hours of Thursday due to dense fog and extreme weather conditions, causing a long power breakdown in 90 percent areas of the country.
A spokesman for the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) said that power supply to major cities including Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Peshawar, and the Balochistan had been restored.
He said 80 percent electricity to Lahore and 60 percent to Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Wazirabad had also been restored.The spokesman said power supply to other remote areas would also resume soon with the addition of more generation in the system.
He said the NTDC network had been restored and 4,000MW added to the system. However, he said, there was still a shortfall of 5,000MW.Director MET Muhammad Hanif has said that dense foggy conditions would continue in the plain areas of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and upper Sindh during the next few days.
Talking to the state-run TV, Hanif said cold and dry weather would prevail during night and morning hours in most parts of the country.He said people travelling from Lahore to Pindi Bhattian on Motorway must be guided by traffic authorities to avoid accidents. Hanif said that though the fog dropped temperatures in Punjab cities, they were not as low as they were last week.
He said that temperatures over the hills were very low, indicating a severe cold wave across the hilly areas. He said that dense fog enveloped most parts of Punjab including Jhelum, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Narowal, Mandi Bahauddin, Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Jhang, Faisalabad, Okara, Sahiwal, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan.