A massive fire broke out in an underground hydroelectric power unit of Srisailam project in Telangana on August 20 at around 10.30 pm. At least 25 engineers of the Telangana State Power Generation Corporation (TSPGC) were on duty at the time when the incident occurred.
As per latest updates, 10 people have been rescued while nine are still missing.
Officials have said that a short circuit in one of the underground hydel power unit led to a fire. The short circuit was reportedly followed by an explosion in unit 4 of the power house.
Dense smoke was seen coming out from the zero level and leading to the service bay and soon the entire power station was filled with smoke.
Duty officers tried to douse the fire, however, the power shutdown posed some serious challenges.
‘As soon as the fire started, they tried to trip the units but that couldn’t happen. So we isolated the 400 KV input and all units were tripped,’ Telangana Transco CMD D. Prabhakar Rao said.
The Telangana government has sought help of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) after over eight-hour long rescue operations of employees was unsuccessful.
The dam is located on river Krishna which divides Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
The station has more than six power generators at its underground plant and each one carries out 150 MW (megawatts) capacity electrical power generators. The fourth panel caught fire first, as per officials.
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