Chaos prevailed from ground to air as the national Capital turned into a dust bowl on Friday evening. Road traffic was thrown out of gear and air services took a hit as duststorm followed by heavy rains lashed the Capital. The severe duststorm occurred at 4.58 pm in the Capital with winds blowing at 92 kmph from the north-west direction. The situation was even worse in Palam area as winds blew at a record velocity of 114.8 kmph. The storm was so violent that it damaged three aircrafts at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport. Besides, air traffic came to a complete standstill with 18 domestic flights and one international flight being diverted to nearby airports.
As the spooky thunderstorm hit the national Capital, vehicular traffic was also badly hit primarily because of numerous cases of trees being uprooted and lamp posts and pillars toppling over. Traffic signals went on the blink as power lines snapped. This aggravated the traffic mess on roads. Several arterial roads in South, Central and New Delhi areas remained congested with bumper-to-bumper traffic which took hours to get cleared. Areas where jams were reported include BRT Corridor, Mathura Road, Vikas Marg, Dhaula Kuan, Oberoi flyover, Mandi House and India Gate, among others. The RTR flyover carriageway going towards Munirka from NH-8 was closed for traffic after some noise barriers fell on the road.
Power supply was also affected in a large part of the city that added to the traffic woes. Train services on Delhi Metro had to be suspended for over an hour as also traffic signals became non-functional due to power supply disruption. “Metro services were disrupted due to failure/erratic power supply from Delhi Transco limited (DTl) to Delhi Metro’s receiving sub-stations (RSS) across the network, which in turn feed power to Metro system for running the trains and stations,” said Anuj
Dayal, DMRC Executive Director (Corporate Communications).At some locations,including Janakpuri and Inderlok, material like tin sheet and pipes got entangled in the OHE (Overhead Electrification Wire) due to the duststorm, making train movement impossible. Passengers were stranded at various Metro stations and even asked to deboard the trains at various locations until normal power supply was restored.
