Major fire breaks at NALCO’s Angul unit

BHUBANESHWAR: NALCO’s Angul unit today witnessed a major fire at its captive power plant ( CPP) that gutted a more than ten year generator transformer. The fire that broke at around 1.15pm in the afternoon on Tuesday morning, was put out after about an hour according to company officials. No person was injured in the fire, which took 8-10 fire engines to put out, according to news reports.

The Mines Ministry, PSU, claimed in a press release, shared with the media in the evening, “The power situation was normalized immediately by starting the stand-by unit. There has been no injury to any person and there was no production loss on account of the fire.” The generator transformer belonged to the Unit-8 of the aluminium makers CPP and is attributed to a short circuit.

The executive director of Nalco’s Smelter & Power claimed “the generator transformer was old one, the damage on account of the fire is marginal."

The power situation had been normalised by starting the stand-by unit claimed the company. It did not however share an estimate of the financial loss on account of this fire, which may run into more than a few crores.