Big Fire / Power Cut

[SEbab]

Hi there

The power did stay on last night and so did the Brigade, they were there all night and are still there now. They also closed the footbridge this morning which was a major pain as I had to drive to get to work on time. It's all open again since this afternoon though.
Has anyone got a link of any sites showing the news footage from Sunday, my neighbour got interviewed and I'd have liked to see it but obviously we all missed it round here due to the lack of power!! My son insists he got filmed too so he's keen to watch it too.

[admin]

SEbab,

You might want to read Newshopper's report here: http://tinyurl.com/5ek5jl

EDF appear to be playing down the issue. But then the BBC were reporting that EDF were claiming only 200 homes were off when we knew most of Sydenham was disconnected (as did their faults hotline).

Do we have a problem with the EDF press office?

Admin

[Pat Trembath]

Not just Sydenham, Admin, the extent of the powercut reached Beckenham,Hither Green and Crystal Palace.

[SEbab]

EDF also claim that most homes had power back by midday!!
It must be a pretty big deal - the brigade stayed all night again last night. The moved in some kind of portacabin things yesterday too.

What is the exact situation with compensation then? Is it only in relation to loss of power? The constant machinery humming over the last 2 nights have caused my son and partner pretty restless sleeps. I only mention them as I sleep like a log most of the time!

[admin]

I think there is a lot of confusion here. The fire was at 07.21am Sunday. It appears that most people were not disconnected until just before 9am. The disconections were over a wide area allegedly triggering a failure at another substation. Hence Sunday morning saw a blackout from Crystal Palace to the west, Beckenham to the east, Dulwich to the north and New Addington to the south - a huge chunk of SE London and a far greater area than that served by the substation.

It appears that power was restored to the non-Sydenham served areas by noon. As this was the 'majority' of homes cut off at 9am - the EDF statement may be technically true. It was interpreted by the BBC as 'emergency over - just a bit of clearing up to do'.

But, basically, Sydenham & Forest Hill were still offline wiith nowt coming out of the Sydenham Park substation. But Sydenham was regarded with no significance (being part of Forest Hill according to the BBC!).

During the afternoon some parts of Sydenham and the remaining surrounding areas were 'patched' in to supplies elsewhere. This included Lower Sydenham and Silverdale about 4pm. Some were connected and then disconnected again.

Then from about 7.30pm to 11pm there was a rolling reconnection of Sydenham. Some bits (and I suspect this is the mysterious '200 homes') were not connected until the early hours of Monday.

So basically most SE London people had a three hour cut. Mosts Sydenham people had a 12 hour cut or thereabouts.

That's my best conclusion from what I read and driving around SE26. If anyone has beter information please share it here.

Admin

[Gaz]

Yes, that timeline/scenario is my understanding from talking to various people living in Forest Hill and Crystal Palace/Syd.

What really frustrated me though (apart from the subsequent non-reporting in the news!) was that when my power went off at 7.45am, it also took down my BT line and my mobile couldn't connect to the 0845 EDF number. I had no way of informing EDF that my power was down and no way of receiving any information on when it may be back up...

[admin]

My BT line from the Sydenham exchange (8778) was unaffected by the powercut. BT should be running with alternative power for this scenerio. Which exchange are you on?
I presume you do mean loss of BT power - rather than not being able to use your line because your phone requires a 240v supply (eg DECT wireless).

BTW the 0800 EDF number during that part of the day wasn't acceptting calls. "We know we have a problem - click!" was all I got. Trying to answer calls from a million people at once is presumably beyond their system. However it did stand up well in the afternoon. The information was frequently updated if a little optimistic.

Admin

[Gaz]

Not sure what exchange I'm actually on (in Wells Park Road), but both flats in our building (and my neighbour's) didn't have any dialling tone until the power came back on at 2120 (and yes, I thought the power supplies were separate!).

(The thing with my mobile is that you cannot dial 0800 or 0845 numbers on it - unless there is something simple I should do like prefixing 0044 or something?!)

[robotfish]

How odd, that people in Lawrie Park Road were connected after 9pm whilst here in Venner Road it was around noon. Still, we had a nice relaxing morning in the garden, and then an unsuspected treat - doing the weekly food shop in the Savacentre which was practically deserted. this was at about 3pm, and I guess the store had only just opened.

I'm all for power cuts, on sunny days.

[ALIB]

My first image post. Photos are timed and dated (bottom righthand corner)
and were taken from my office window at the time of my first post on this thread
First pictures of BIG FIRE

One on the right timed at 7.19am (as it started), on left was as the oil caught fire (black smoke)

Alib

[biffa]

Hi, I posted the previous in a rush just incase the power went mid-flo!

What I really wanted to say was how annoyed I was about the events of yesterday. My garden literally backs onto the site where the fire took place, we woke to a humming noise which was at around 7:20am. When we looked out the kids bedroom window the building was fully ablaze and had clearly been on fire for awhile. At this point there was no brigade to be seen, we quickly moved the children away from the window as we didn't know how safe it was and proceeded to dial 999, the operator told us the services were on their way.
At around 7:35 the brigade arrived, The brigade tried various water points for their hoses in the immediate area and none had water! They had to use one which was all the way down the road on Sydenham park Rd before they could access any water.
My main points of concern are:
If they thought the area was unsafe for spectators standing in the area why did they think it safe for residence in the flat immediately opposite the fire to stay in the block and not evacuate? The only safety measure we were given was to stay away from the windows.
Why was water not available in Longfield Crescent - it seems to me that all the recent Thames Water works that have taken place have caused a problem with the supply.
The initial call to the services was by a regular concerned person, shouldn't a building of it's kind be somehow hooked up directly to the services so that when a fire occurs they are immediatley alerted and at the scene as soon as possible?
We were very poorly informed all the way throughout the day, there were masses of police etc. and fireman who were sitting around that could've been talking to us the residents just to reassure us of the situation. When we did ask questions we were made to feel like we were being annoying.

.

Hi

thought i would try and answer a few of your points

from time of call to attendance will be be no more than 5 mins max ..so we must assume that if the brigade arrived at 0735 then the control op was taking call at approx 0729

water supply is a problem in london sometimes we carry out yearly hyrdrant checks but thats it ..its a water authority maintainence (or lack off ) issue

unsafe for spectators , beacuse of smoke inhalation and possibilty of explosions , plus people get too close to try and get pics /vids and its more safety concerns that we do not need ..

lack of info is down to police , but it doesnt give firemen carte blanche to ignore you


due to "modernised" safety reforms, its now down to owners/occupiers of premises to carry out their own risk assessment and thus an automatic fire alarm is not standard , furthermore transformers would cause many false alarms due to the amount of heat they generate