A contractor has escaped injury after damaging a high voltage underground electricity cable in Portadown, Northern Ireland.

Around 2,000 homes and businesses were left without electricity shortly after 9.20am on Wednesday 29 October following the damage.

The incident happened as a contractor, excavating ground for a new housing development in Goban Street, hit and damaged an 11,000 volt electricity cable supplying the local area.

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Fiona McClintock, Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) Customer Relations Manager for the area says this incident could have caused injury or even death. She said: "In this incident, the contractor mistakenly thought the high voltage electricity cable was an abandoned gas pipe and used a power saw to try to remove it. Miraculously, the power saw operator and those on site were uninjured but they are lucky to have escaped from this incident. The end result could easily have been very different."

NIE emergency crews, responded immediately, arriving on site to assess the damage and restoring supplies to all but 118 customers by within an hour. The remaining customers went back on supply at 11.00am and work to replace the damaged cable continued through the afternoon.

(CD/IT)