Vandals Blamed For Carrick Substation Damage

Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE), the network company, has strongly condemned vandals who deliberately set on fire an electricity substation in the Joymount area of Carrickfergus last night.

The fire in the town centre, which was attended by the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service and the PSNI, left around 3,000 properties without power and has caused a network clean up operation costing many tens of thousands of pounds.

NIE was made aware of the incident at 20.20 and its emergency repair teams responded immediately to make the area safe. Engineers restored electricity to all but 60 properties by 22:10. All homes had supplies restored from alternatives sources by 05:25.

It is estimated that permanent repairs will take a number of days.

Randal Gilbert, NIE’s Duty Incident Manager, said: "Our first priority was to make the area safe and restore electricity via alternative network channels to customers as quickly as possible.

"This morning it is clear that the substation and several of the underground cables supplying it have been damaged beyond repair. We currently have teams off site building a replacement substation and teams onsite salvaging and repairing the network in the vicinity of the substation. This work will be ongoing throughout the weekend.

"We cannot stress strongly enough how dangerous it is to tamper with electricity substations. Substations contain live equipment energised at several thousand volts of electricity. These vandals were lucky to make it out with their lives. As it is, they caused considerable inconvenience to the local community and local businesses.

"We regret the inconvenience experienced by customers as a result of this deliberate act and will continue to work with the PSNI to identify those responsible."

(GK)