Mumbai power outage: Fire reported in hospital

In a freak accident, the generator room of Apex hospital in Mumbai caught fire today. Fortunately, no untoward incident was reported from the site.

The hospital is located in Mumbai's Mulund area. Due to a power outage in the city, the hospital was running its generator sets when the incident happened. It is to be noted that power supply to the area has not yet been restored.

Earlier in the morning, several areas in Mumbai suffered a major blackout due to a sudden power failure. The massive outage crippled normal life in the commercial capital. According to Tata Power, simultaneous substation tripping in MSETCL's Kalwa, Kharghar caused a huge dip in frequency in the Mumbai transmission system which led to tripping of Mumbai power supply.

Some of the worst affected areas were Juhu, Andheri, Mira Road, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Panvel.

Due to grid failure, hospitals in Mumbai were instructed to get enough supply of diesel for at least eight hours to assure no power failures in hospitals especially ICUs.

In a statement, IS Chahal, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner said, "All the hospitals to contact their respective SWM transport garage officers to get enough supply of diesel for at least eight hours so that there are no power failures in hospitals especially ICUs. In case of any issues please contact the disaster control room for help. CE SWM to coordinate this."

Chahal had also instructed disaster control to keep standby private mobile DG set vehicles handy in case power failure continued beyond two hours.

Meanwhile, power supply is yet to be restored in the Mulund area of Mumbai where the hospital is located.