Tuesday, December 22, 2009

UK engineers race against time to restore utilities for Christmas

Luke Walsh in Edie.net: Cold weather has caused chaos to the nations utilities cracking pipes have left thousands of people without gas or power. National Grid engineers are gradually restoring gas supplies to East Barnet in London and Caddington in Luton.

The pipes burst on Saturday (December 19) and engineers are working to restore supplies, while EDF has managed to fix problems that left thousands of people without power in the east of England. National Grid said it had drafted in extra engineers as 1000 homes in East Barnet are without gas after a water pipe burst and flooded the mains. Terry Penny, National Grid's incident controller, said: "A huge amount of water got into the gas network and it is taking time to pump out, at present it is too early to say when all gas supplies will be restored."

Around 1300 homes in Caddington have been without a gas supply after water from another burst pipe poured into the village's gas mains. Engineers have started to reconnect homes, however there is still water in the gas mains in the south west of the village and engineers are not yet able to reconnect all supplies…

Shot of a gas main (probably not a British one) by Cyron Ray Macey, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

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