The gas and electricity companies are responsible for the practical and operational management of an incident. These companies have well-established plans and procedures in place to respond to incidents, which can range from the management of a local incident to a national level disruption.
Gas failure at a local level is rare and tends to occur as a result of an accident or technical failure of equipment. Gas failure at a regional or even national level is unlikely but may be caused by a failure of the gas transmission system.
Electricity failure can occur at a local level, across an entire region, or at a national level. The impacts of electricity failure events will vary with scale. Instances of electricity failure (also referred to as power loss or blackout) can have a number of causes including severe weather, infrastructure failure, and/or imbalance of supply and demand.
Five ways to prepare for a power cut:
- Keep a torch in a safe place
- Any vulnerable family members may register as a priority customer with Western Power Distribution
- A wind-up, solar or battery radio is essential to hear when the power cut is likely to finish.
- Consider an analogue landline phone that will work in a power outage
- Keep a battery / solar charger handy so that you can recharge electronic devices.
In an emergency:
If you experience a power cut that you weren’t expecting, you can report it by calling 105. This will connect you to your distribution network operator (DNO), who owns and maintains the power lines that connect to homes or businesses.