During the major floods in Cumbria in November the town of Workington was physically cut in half by extreme amounts of flood water. 6 bridges collapsed and the last remaining, Calva Bridge carrying utilities including telecoms cables, was condemned, putting lives at risk as 999 calls relied upon this link.
People could not use Calva bridge to cross from one side of Workington to the other, but it was more vital to residents and businesses than for simply getting around. All the major utility companies used this particular bridge for cabling and transport, including BT. Subsequently 999 calls were at risk of not being able to get through which could have meant life or death situations for people trying to call in.
Engineers from Open Reach were dispatched to re-route cabling, but the urgency in order to do this before any circuits went down, could have been avoided. Talking to a couple of these engineers at the Emergency Services Show on the 25th November, they could clearly see how GemaTech’s Portable Recovery Unit would have been the ideal solution for call re-routing in this instance. Had the circuits gone down, the PRU would have re-routed any incoming calls, giving the engineers the time to restore the permanent cabling and minimising the number of ‘lost’ calls.
In order to help organisations in the future, GemaTech responded to the news about the floods in Cumbria with our own top ten tips for flood planning for businesses.
The Army was sent to build a temporary bridge for residents which was constructed within a week. A temporary train station for residents was also set up to enable them to get from one side of town to the other.
Fortunately Calva Bridge did not fully collapse and cables were able to be re-routed in time. 999 calls were able to get through, but next time they may not be so lucky…
