Giga Digger blacks out Marlborough

At around 11am this morning you, and just about everyone else in Marlborough or in a village outside experienced a power cut. Thankfully it was short, in some places the supply resumed within a couple of minutes or so but for many it was a loss of work (computer files deleting etc.), maybe a health issue (disruption to a medical procedure?) or just a general and unwanted inconvenience. The lights went out, kettle took longer to boil….

What happened? Unsure exactly what yet but it would appear that a Giga digger driver hit an underground power cable, in the High Street, near to the top of Figgins Lane and this caused the blackout.

According to SSEN 1,400 properties in and around Marlborough were affected. Some for ninety minutes.

There is (still) a great deal of work being done by ‘the Gigas’ – the contractors laying the broadband fibre cable throughout the town. Normally the inconvenience is to traffic – the town grinds to a halt, or part of the town anyway – when they set up traffic control lights. Other inconveniences, particularly now that they are working in the High Street – is the loss of parking space. In the summer, peak season, also when the Summer School at The college is running. And on the top / bottom areas of the High Street where the parking is free (for 30 mins).

Maybe, we hope, when all the work is done Marlborough residents will be blessed with very high speed broadband, and at a far lower price that we are currently paying. OK, we can hope……

A spokesperson from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said: “We’d like to thank our customers in and around Marlborough High Street for their patience earlier today, as our teams worked hard to get their power back on after a third party had struck one of our underground cables.  In situations like this, our priority is to restore our customers’ power as safely and as quickly as possible, and we were able to do this today by re-routing supplies to different parts of the network, with everyone’s power back on shortly after 12:30.”