Powerless

I did write a post yesterday. I wrote it offline, on battery power, in semi darkness. Because when I arrived home yesterday evening there was no electricity in the house.

From what we could piece together, a delivery of blocks to the house severed an external overhead powerline on the road running past our house. A team from the power company came out to repair it and, while they were there, decided our house was not safe to have an electricity supply and cut it off, where the supply comes off the grid at the corner of the house next door. They also neglected to tell anyone they had done this.

So when I discovered the power was off, and having checked the fuse board, checked with the builders (who said there had been a problem with external overhead cables nearby, but nothing to do with the house) and that next door had power, I reported a fault to the electricity company. They sent a crew out and checked the cabling, finding no trace of a current at our house. They followed the dead wiring to next door's gable where they found our mains connection deliberately cut. So they phoned it in to the depot and learned that the early crew had deemed the supply unsafe and cut it. With a status of "unsafe" declared they could not reconnect. We made arrangements for the builder to have an electrician on site for Saturday morning, and we went to bed.

The builder arrived at 10 this morning and we rang the power company so they could send a reconnection crew to supervise the making safe of our wiring. They refused. Reconnection of an unsafe supply has to go through management and mangement don't work weekends. So we have decamped for the weekend to a neighbour, where I'm writing this.

It would appear that electricity company crews are free to roam the streets, cutting off power supplies as they see fit without reporting or answering to any authority, least of all the customer left in darkness.

The post on yesterday's work will follow shortly.