cookery school

GAS FIRM GIVES
3,000-POUND THANK YOU TO LAKES RESCUE TEAM

A rescue team has been awarded £3,000 for letting its base become the nerve centre of a big operation to restore gas to a community.

Paul Clarke, National Grid incident controller, handed over the cheque to members of Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team.

The donation was made as a thank you gesture to the team and the people of Ambleside for their help and patience, while engineers worked around the clock to put homes and businesses back on gas following a gas cut on January 16.

All occupied properties were back on gas by January 21.

Water from thawing ice had caused the problems after it entered the gas pipe system.

Mr Clarke said: "It is perhaps ironic that we chose the centre as our incident room as we certainly had a mountain to climb in terms of restoring supplies to Ambleside.

"However, during the five days it took us to get supplies restored, our engineers were spurred on by the incredible response from local people.

"They were quick to understand that we couldn't perform a 'quick fix' and that we needed to visit each individual property to make sure the gas was turned back on safely.

"We were grateful for the patience we were shown - even by people who had been off gas for several days when we arrived to reconnect them."

Once the scale of the problem was realised, National Grid drafted in engineers from across the North West and beyond to get supplies restored to more than 1,200 homes.

The company used the mountain rescue centre in Lake Road as an incident room.

Emergency planners from Cumbria County Council and South Lakeland District Council helped National Grid co-ordinate its response.

And during exceptionally long shifts engineers were fed food cooked by staff at the Lucy's of Ambleside restaurant.

Mr Clarke added: "We are grateful to the staff of the mountain rescue centre, the two local authorities and to Lucy's of Ambleside as they all played a major role in helping keep our army of engineers on the march.

"Without them and without the efforts of National Grid employees, the process of restoring supplies could have taken much longer."

By David Pickthall
david.pickthall@nwemail.co.uk