Electrical fire in meter room, crescent house basement

[nathan]

Electrical fire in the basement of Crescent house, Fire Brigade attended, Electrical engineers from  London Fire brigade are in attendance, making safe and reinstalling fuses one by one for any undamaged meters and checking all the cables for all the meters, it is not their job or responsibility to repair or replace any damaged meters or cables, it is the City of London housing department who are responsible.

Several residents and the Fire Brigade could not make contact with the Housing department out of hours service numbers. Someone from the Corporation contacted  Wates Living space who sent out an electrician who was not legally allowed to or qualified to work on the damaged meters or cabling, he left within minutes after viewing the fire damage, nice little earner, sunday rates, etc.

usual message on our out of hours service number,

"I am very sorry its sad but true theres no here to talk to you, 

but if you speak after  the tone I promise Ill get back to you".

All the meters that were destroyed are for first floor flats I think, and looks like more than 20 meters are destroyed, they are somewhere between No.s 100-130, but cant be sure exactly which flats, and if the cabling is damaged there may be more residents without electricity. 

My sympathy goes to anyone without electricity especially the vulnerable people, but i cant see any action being taken to resolve the emergency till sometime tomorrow.

[Maria Elizabeth Prior]

Hi Nathan.  The worrying thing here is that nobody could get in touch with anyone from the Corporation's after hours service.  People I have spoken to are absolutely furious.  This is not the first time someone like this has happened when we cannot get in touch with someone after hours.  Its totally unacceptable, and I will be giving all the details to the Committee of GLERA.  

[nathan]

Anyone in Crescent house might like to check all their electrical goods in their flats, I have one item whose power supply has been burnt out. Makes you wonder how safe the electrics are in this place.

The fire officer said it looked like the fire had originated in a very old electricity meter.