MARGAO
Power officials on Saturday claimed that the 33kV line passing over the Sonsodo dump had tripped exactly at 1 pm on Friday.
That’s not all. The officials further claimed that the Ponda-Raia high tension line was only charged and not loaded at the time of the incident.
Executive Engineer Rajiv Samant and Assistant Engineer Carlos Fernandes pointed out the logbook shows that the 33kV high tension line had tripped exactly at 1 pm on Friday, even as reports suggest that fire was noticed at the dump at around 12.45 pm.
“If the high tension line had tripped at 1 pm, it only goes to show that the line was not responsible for the fire incident since the dump was under fire before 1 pm. We can say that the conductor had snapped only after it got melted due to the heat generated by the fire underneath the line”, both Samant and Fernandes pointed out.
Margao Municipal Council Chairperson Lyndon Pereira and civic officials, including councillors, however, have begged to differ, saying the fire was trigged at the dump only after the overhead line had snapped and fallen on the dry waste.
