Crews tackle cable fire as flames 'come out of path'

Published on 29th March 2007 in News

Up to 40 households in Howden were left without electricity last Thursday after a fire involving an underground cable.

Firefighters were called to Flatgate at 5.40am after reports of flames coming from the pavement.

They discovered the fire was coming from a stop-cock access point outside a house and used a powder extinguisher to put out the flames.

They also called in the local electricity distributors, YEDL. Engineers disconnected the supply to between 30 and 40 customers.

Some customers were left without electricity for nearly 12-hours and one resident of Flatgate, David Lancaster, said he was unhappy with the way the incident was handled, and with the electricity distributors in general.

"They never told anybody that the power was going to be off. They should have had a supervisor knocking on doors.

He also said: "Power outages are happening far too often.

"This was the second outage in the last four weeks - it's not good enough."

John Bird, director of external affairs for CE Electric, said that a team had been on site to deal with the problem within 45 minutes.

"Work progressed throughout most of the day, and there was some delay because the gas network operator had to be informed.

"The electricity was back on by 6pm."

He apologised to all the customers affected and said the best way of keeping them informed was through the call centre.

He also said the other power cut was due to an unrelated problem.