51-hour outage leaves 1,200 families stranded in Gurgaon’s Signature Global Solera

Gurgaon: A 51-hour outage left over 1,200 families in Signature Global Solera with no electricity till 6.30pm Wednesday. Residents said power went out around 3pm on Monday, barely hours after the city was submerged under knee-deep water. Many decided to work from home, but with no power backup, the housing society in Sector 107 was cut off from nearly all essentials for over two days, with no means to attend online classes or work remotely.Ashok Kumar, a 37-year-old electrical engineer, worked from home on Tuesday until his laptop battery began to wear out by evening. Soon, the inverter gave up, and WI-FI shut down as power went off. With all lights out, the society soon came to a standstill. "We are living on candlelight. Even basic household chores are being done in the dark," he said, adding that his son missed school for the second consecutive day.A fault in the feeder line tripped a transformer at the Sector 107 substation during heavy rain on Monday, resulting in the outage. To make things worse, the society was surrounded by waterlogged roads, prompting residents to manually pump out the water from the society's entrances. Their efforts didn't yield much result as water from the adjoining stretch kept gushing back in. "We can't even step out to buy milk or groceries because both society entrances are submerged under three feet of water. Deliveries have stopped as there is severe waterlogging at both entrances," Ashok added. "We even put up mud barriers to stop the water, which didn't help. People were forced to stay inside their homes, while the power supply was only restored after 51 hours," said Santosh Mathur, RWA general secretary.Residents said numerous distress calls and posts on social media drew no response from authorities. "For three days, we were left on our own, with no power, no mobility, no support. It's unacceptable for an entire housing complex to be cut off like this with no intervention," said Rachit Pandey, a resident.Officials at DHBVN said the supply was already restored from their end. "We have restored the power supply from the switching station in Sector 107 on Wednesday morning. We have asked the society management to test their cable as moisture in cables can cause further damage," said Manoj Kumar, executive engineer, DHBVN.