Flooding in Northern Britain Cuts Power to Tens of Thousands

Heavy rains and flooding have left at least 40,000 properties without electricity in and around Lancashire and Cumbria counties in northwestern England.

“We’ve had engineers on boats working with the emergency services to try and access faults in Cumbria, and we’ve seen sterling efforts from teams in Lancaster to repair the damaged substation, while others connect generators to speed up restoration to customers,” said Electricity North West Incident Manager, Steve Cox, according to a CNN report on Monday.

Progress was being made quickly and the utility predicted most homes would have power back on sometime before Monday evening after Storm Desmond dumped record levels of rain on northern England and Scotland.

In Cumbria, the most heavily affected county, the local council website says that 33 schools will remain closed Monday and are not expected to reopen at least until Tuesday. The power cuts have also closed at least 10 schools in Lancashire.