A FIRE crew was called to a mobile home site in Berkeley after a broken pylon cable came down onto homes and cars.

Residents of Berkeley Vale Park left their mobile homes on Thursday, November 13 after the site manager called the emergency services at 11.29am. A broken cable had fallen onto the roofs of several homes and residents' cars, slightly melting the front tyres of one resident’s car.

Dursley fire service sent a crew of five to Hook Street to deal with the cables and divert vehicles away from the road.

All 110 mobile homes had a power cut due to the cable failure and no one was hurt from the incident.

Watch manager, Neil Bridges said: “We were called this morning after a failure in the cables from the electricity pylons. A joint had broken on the cable which naturally sparked as it was still live at the time.

“It came down on a number of properties, they tripped out as they were live wires but there was no fire as a result of it.”

Western Power were already close by the area and arrived at the scene minutes after the call was made.

One of the residents, Andy Adams said: “I was indoors and heard a very big bang so came outside to see what was happening. I saw the cable falling down and become live, it landed on two cars and fell over the roofs close by.

“One cable was smoking a bit on the roof of a mobile home but no one was inside at the time. The tyres on someone’s car have been affected a bit by the cable on the ground.”

Site manager, Julia Quinlan said: “The response from the police, fire service and Western Power has been fantastic. Western Power arrived minutes after being called.

“I checked on most of the residents, all are over 50 years old, and our main concern was that all the mobile homes have bottled gas, if there were any sparks or other problems from the cable. All the services gave a great response.”

At 12.50pm the fire crew left declaring the area safe. Western Power are dealing with the cable failure.

Western power communications team member, Michael Clarkson said: “We can confirm the overhead fault, alerted at about 11am resulted in 700 properties losing power in the Berkeley area. We managed to restore 600 properties within the hour, but installed a generator for the properties that took longer to help restore. We plan to carry final repairs on Monday.

Mr Bridges added: “While we were in the area we did house checks for community fire safety, looking at homes’ smoke alarms as we want to promote safety in the home.”

For information go to: www.glosfire.gov.uk