Power failure left thousands without electricity

Date published: 22/02/2008

A power failure affecting the town centre and other areas in Rochdale left thousands without electricity this morning (Friday 22 February).

Christian Ewen, of United Utilities, said: "We received a call at approximately 8.20am that a cable fault had occurred in the area.

"Our engineers were dispatched immediately and after arriving on-site they worked as quickly as possible to locate the source of the fault and carry out the repair.

"Power was restored to the 1,655 customers affected by 10.30am.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Rochdale Online was affected.

Managing Director Pauline Journeaux said: "We had a bit of a power surge and then a power cut which could have caused us a problem with our routers and servers but thankfully the emergency backup did its job. However, being without power for even a couple of hours is bad news for any IT business."