67,000 Burnley and Nelson homes suffer power cuts

Electricity supplier, Electricity North West, said the lightning storm affected some of the company's largest substations in the area as the thunderstorm - accompanied by a downfall of biblical proportions - swept across the country.

According to Electricity North West, at 7:23pm, 35,000 properties in Burnley suffered power cuts lasting for just three minutes as the automatic systems soon restored power.

32,302 properties in Nelson suffered a lightning-caused power cut at 8:11pm with 13,000 similarly restored within three minutes, but 19,000 homes were left without a supply for approximately two hours after engineers were required to attend sites for safety reasons.

Chris Fox, control room manager at Electricity North West, said: “Last night’s storm was one of the worst lightning storms we’ve seen for a long time affecting such a wide area. I’m pleased that our automatic restoration systems worked well and restored the vast majority of properties within a few minutes.

"Where engineers had to attend site in Nelson, they tackled difficult conditions and flash flooding on the way to restore supplies and worked through the night to ensure the system was back to normal as quickly as possible.”

Customers with power cuts can contact Electricity North West on the new national power cut number, 105, or follow @ElectricityNW on Twitter for updates.