Chester - loss of gas

Nick Jerman, Head of Customer Operations (North West) for Cadent, said:

“Our team worked incredibly hard, from early morning to late in the evening, to restore gas to the area.

“We now have only a small number of properties to restore gas to – the gas is there, it’s just that no-one has been home when we have made visits to turn it back on.

“We will try several more times, and then leave details on how to contact us to arrange for an engineer to visit. What’s been incredible to witness throughout this last week is the response from the local community.

“Kind, courteous and understanding to the team – despite the challenging circumstances everyone found themselves in. We can’t thank everyone enough.”

For background

At around 8.50pm on Friday 21^st June, Cadent was alerted to a fire on a gas main, in the Dee Banks / Huntington area of Chester.

This was the result of damage caused to the gas main. The exact circumstances of what happened remains under investigation.

Cadent engineers were on site quickly and worked initially to bring the fire under control.

This was achieved late on Friday, by stopping the flow of gas through the pipeline.

An unavoidable consequence of this was a large number of properties losing their gas supply.

A major operation took place over seven days to very carefully and safely reintroduce gas to 18km of gas pipes impacted by this.

This had to be done in a phased way, with the area sub-divided into 11 zones, which contained around 2500 properties in total (although not all were gas users).

Late on Thursday night, gas had been restored to zones 9 to 11, the final three zones to have supply restored.

The only properties that currently do not have gas restored are those where engineers have not been able to access – ie. no-one was in when Cadent has called.

These properties continue to be revisited – a decision will be made later to revert to ‘business as usual’, with these property owners encouraged to make contact with Cadent when they return home.

Every day, around 100 engineers and support teams have been based in this area of Chester, to work on the gas restoration and support customers impacted.

A customer centre was set up at St Luke’s Church and the engineers’ command hub was at Chester Rugby Club.

Food vans were parked outside the church, to provide impacted customers with hot meals for both lunch and dinner.

The British Red Cross supported Cadent engineers in visiting customers on the Priority Services Register, to make sure they were looked after and catered for. Cheshire West and Chester Council co-ordinated multi-agency calls, to ensure the resources of various agencies where available where needed.

Updates were posted on a dedicated incident webpage and posted into local community Facebook groups.

Important message on ‘if you smell gas’

With gas now fully back into the network, it’s important to stress that if you ever smell gas, call the gas emergency service on 0800 111 999*. This is a 24/7, 365-day service. All calls are recorded and may be monitored.

*All calls are recorded and maybe monitored