Electricity engineers prepared for Storm Christoph

Forecasters from the Met Office officially named the third storm of the season on Monday afternoon after issuing yellow and amber weather warnings.

As key workers, engineers for the power network operator are putting plans in place to monitor the network and ensure supplies and teams are available to respond if any electricity substations are affected by flooding.

Sam Loukes, Electricity North West’s incident manager, said: “We’re going to be as prepared as ever for Storm Christoph. We always have engineers on standby but when bad weather is forecast, we can ramp this up where possible.

“We’re well practiced given Storm Bella hit the region just several weeks back over the festive period. Throughout the region, we’ll have local teams available to respond quickly on the ground and our customer team will also be available, and we’ll be sending out regular updates via our social media channels.

“We invest money throughout the year to ensure our network is as resilient as possible but when the weather hits, we make sure we’re ready to respond too.

“If anybody does see any damage to electricity equipment over the next few days then I urge them to stay away and report it to us immediately by calling 105.”

Electricity North West keeps supplies including extra sandbags, pumps and other equipment in ever-ready ‘flood cubes’ – containers that can be moved around the region to battle potential floods. These flood cubes are on standby to be moved to wherever they are needed on the network over the next few days.

Over the festive break, Electricity North West engineers battled terrible conditions, working tirelessly for 24 hours repairing the damage caused by Storm Bella.

As well as restoring power to more than 5,800 customers, the contact centre also handled more than 1,400 direct calls from customers.

You can view any live power cut information in the region on Electricity North West’s website here, get in touch on Twitter or Facebook, or by calling for free on 105 from any phone.

Electricity North West offers extra support to customers through their Priority Services Register. For more information and to register visit www.enwl.co.uk/priority .