Slip of a shovel knocks out power to the Pollet
POWER to many businesses in the Pollet was knocked out for about 45 minutes during the busiest part of the day today [Wednesday] after an electricity cable was damaged.
Guernsey Electricity was continuing its work to repair another damaged cable at the bottom of Forest Lane when a worker with a shovel clipped a powered cable at about 12.30pm.
GE’s health and safety advisor John Tostevin said that after the cable was hit the utility turned off the power immediately while it was repaired, with the work taking about 45 minutes.
The company was unable to say how many businesses were affected.
It was a busy time for all businesses, but in particular cafes and restaurants in the area, many of which were almost full with customers.
Moore’s Hotel general manager Stephen Purtill said today was not the first time the premises had been affected by a cut . ‘We had a repetition of a problem with two electricity feeds into the hotel,’ he said.
The earlier cut affected just the side of the building occupied by The Hideaway restaurant, but the second one, due to the cable break, hit the whole hotel.
‘We were fairly busy,’ said Mr Purtill. ‘It obviously affected the chambermaids’ ability to clean the rooms and we were relying on emergency lighting throughout the building.’
With telephones down, the business – like all others hit by the power cut – was unable to take credit card payments, which was a problem when people who had finished their lunch had to leave.
‘People were very understanding that things weren’t under our control,’ he said.
Coffee shop Woodies closed its doors during the power cut, since it could not take payments, but people who were sitting in the cafe had already paid for their food and drink so were able to finish and leave.
‘The ones inside weren’t bothered,’ said barista Lelde Strusus. ‘It was annoying because it was around midday and all the people were coming for lunch.’
Perhaps one of the worst-affected businesses in the road was Millets, which still had a sign up saying that it was closed due to the power cut some 25 minutes after the power had been restored.
‘It knocked out our internet and all our systems have to come back online,’ said assistant manager Brandon Archer.
He said that the business had local computer servers on the premises which were administered remotely and so the store had to wait until the IT team were able to reset them.
But he was impressed at the speed with which power was restored. ‘Guernsey Electricity told us it could be off for up to three hours. We were surprised – we’d just gone out and got some food then sat down and the power came back.’
