Television viewing and internet browsing were brought to an abrupt halt in one area of Ruddington last night as around 124 homes lost power.
Tuesday evening’s outage affected residents of Elms Park and Sheepfold Lane. One householder reported flames shooting from a manhole on the roadside – before emergency services and an electricity van arrived at the scene.
David Brown, who shared the above photo on social media at around half past eleven, reported: “Two fire engines, about nine police officers and a Western Power engineer turned up. All power out. Appears to be impacting virgin networks locally as well for those with UPS.”
Western Power Distribution (WPD) confirmed to RUDDINGTON.info that a fire was the cause of the problem. Supplies were lost at 10.25pm with most homes back on by 2.20am this morning – although around ten houses had to wait until 3.15am.
However, resident Kayleigh Loffhagen was more worried about her food than television viewing or internet browsing: “It’s the fridge and freezer that’s the concern when the power is off for hours on end!” she says. “Thankfully they got it on before the 4.30am time they had quoted, else our food would have been longer than 6 hours in the fridge without power.”
This latest fire follows an even more dramatic incident in Ruddington last month (photograph above by Wayne Swift) where an electricity sub-station on Old Station Drive mysteriously caught alight and briefly cut power to almost 2,000 homes at the northern end of our village. However, like the latest one, this blaze was found to not be suspicious.
A WPD spokesperson says of last night’s Elms Park fire: “It looks like a faulty cable. No signs of vandalism.”
