The pre-monsoon showers of Monday evening in the city uprooted several trees and saw branches falling on power lines, disrupting power supply in many pockets.
While the solution could be to shift the overhead power lines underground, it could prove a very costly affair for a city like Bengaluru with its dense population and large number of trees. It would take a lot of expertise to accomplish this herculean task.
But the overhead power lines could be shifted underground in some important localities and upcoming layouts and new areas could be developed with underground power cables. Aerial bunching of cables could be another solution.
In the meanwhile, the BESCOM can in coordination with the BBMP and the forest department, remove old trees with weak roots and trim tree branches that are a threat to electric pole and cables.
What the officials do at present is randomly trim a tree’s branches, shifting its centre of gravity, which causes it to fall in heavy rain and wind, leading to havoc in the city. Civic bodies too need to take care when digging trenches for various repairs that the roots of trees in the vicinity are not damaged, making them vulnerable to heavy rain and wind.
