Thousands of homes are left without power after a local electrical substation fire

There were over two thousand homes left without power after a fire had broke out as at local electrical substation in Leyland. On Sunday at around 8.40pm, fire fighters were called to the incident on Thornhill Road, Broadfield. It is believed that the insulation which surrounded the 11,000 voltage cable had deteriorated, which then later caused it to go up in flames.

Watch Manager, Shaun Thornley said, “The cable had exploded, which blew the small doors of the substation open before we had arrived. The high voltage cable had set fire after the insulation had broken down on the cable and it was exceeding worrying as an 11,000 voltage cable can do a lot of damage. We waited for representatives from Electricity North West, to ensure that it was safe and then went in and put the small fire out.”

Fire Fighters had used the dry powder in order to help tackle the Blaze when Electricity North West went it and restored the power as quickly and as efficiently, however there was discussion of putting in a temporary generator in while the cable were being repaired. It was later confirmed by Electricity North West that there had been a fault at the substation which caused 2,197 properties in the area to be affected with the lost of power.

By 9.45pm, the engineers have restored power to more than 2,000 of the properties with the rest being supplied using generators by 2.45am Monday morning. A spokesman for Electricity North West said: “We apologise to those affected by this fault, and thank the fire service for their assistance. Our engineers quickly arrived on-site and will work to remove the damaged equipment and restore power. Thankfully these types of faults are rare, and we are carrying out a full investigation into the cause.”