After almost 31 hours, power supply at many areas in Sylhet city started restoring from 6:10pm yesterday.

Most parts of Sylhet and some parts of Sunamganj districts plunged into darkness after a fire broke out at the 132/33 KV Sylhet Grid Substation in Kumargaon area of Sylhet around 11:00am Tuesday.

Juwel Rana, assistant engineer (sale and distribution) of Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) in Sylhet, said, "After emergency repair work, we've started restoring power connection at different parts of the city and outskirts. As the damage is huge, it will take some time to restore all connection to normalcy".

Masnun Alam, sub-assistant engineer of Power Grid Company Bangladesh (PGCB) told The Daily Star that the power supply to all other upazilas in Sylhet and Sunamganj under Palli Bidyut were restored earlier on Tuesday night through alternative sub-stations.

"In the grid substation, the fire blazed at the 33KV feeder line, then to one transformer of BPDB and one of PGCB. Then one control board of the station exploded", he said describing the incident.

Meanwhile, two probe committees -- one of PGCB and another of BPDB -- were formed on Tuesday.

Due to the power crisis, services at hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres have been disrupted.

"The small health care establishments are not being able to provide services due to the power outage. Larger ones are also suffering to provide uninterrupted services", said Dr Naseem Hossain, president of the owners association of private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres in Sylhet.

Moreover, thousands of people have been suffering from crisis of water and other related services due to the power outage.

Alauddin Ahmed, a resident of Dakshin Surma area said, "Due to the outage, we suffered most as Mobile phones had no charge, internet connection were disrupted and most importantly -- no water in house".

Zaheda Akter, of the area, said, "Frozen foods are also perishing due to this extended power cut. Candles become scarce in the shops and we had to buy water from sellers moving with drums of water in van".

Ali Akbar, executive engineer of Sylhet City Corporation (water distribution), said, "We are not being able to supply the demand of eight crore litres per day. People will keep suffering until the power connection is restored completely".