Millions of people were left without electricity in most of Bangladesh, except some parts in Rangpur, after a transmission line tripped somewhere in the eastern part of the country on Tuesday.
The source of the outage was likely in the districts east of the Jamuna River, according to officials at the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB).
All power plants tripped one after another and the electricity supply went off in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Barisal, and Mymensingh divisions at 2:05pm. Only a few districts in Rangpur division were unaffected, said a top official of PGCB.
The authorities started restoring the connections in the evening, with millions of people looking for candles and kerosene at shops, and fuel from filling stations to run generators in Dhaka and elsewhere.
This was the biggest power outage in Bangladesh since 2014, when the whole country witnessed a blackout for around 12 hours on November 1, 2014. The last grid failure affected 32 districts on May 2, 2017.
BPDB Director (Public Relations) Shameem Hasan earlier informed that engineers of both BPDB and PGCB were trying their best to restore electricity transmission. State Minister of the ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak also said the power supply in Dhaka would be fully restored by 8pm.
PGCB officials, however, said they could not identify the exact reason and location of the fault that triggered the grid failure.
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid in the afternoon ordered the Power Division to form two separate inquiry committees - one by the Power Division and the other by a third-party - for investigating the national power transmission grid failure.
Millions suffer
Millions of people across Bangladesh suffered immensely due to the sudden blackout.
The power outage severely disrupted emergency services, such as healthcare at hospitals, while operations at factories, offices and apartment buildings were disrupted due to the outage, forcing people to rely on generators.
Long queues of people carrying drums and pots were seen at various petrol pumps of the capital from Tuesday afternoon till evening due to the sudden power outage.
The queues, for loose diesel to be used in generators, went long as the power supply could not be restored till evening.
“Due to the high demand for diesel, sales of the fuel oil finished within hours and many buyers failed to collect it,” Nazmul Haque, president of Bangladesh Petrol Pump Owners Association, told UNB.
He said only 25% of about 40 pumps in Dhaka city sell diesel, while the remaining 75% only sell octane and petrol.
He added that many pumps could not collect adequate quantities of diesel from depots as some of their employees are on leave for Durga Puja. As a result, some pumps which sell diesel also failed to cope with the extra pressure.
People were also seen buying candles in bulk in the evening for their homes and shops.
Moreover, telecommunication services were disrupted in many parts of Bangladesh following the national power grid failure. Calls, short messaging services and internet services using handsets were disrupted due to the blackout.