Engineers repairing the underground cables damaged yesterday by another company in Ashton are urging local residents to continue saving power to reduce pressure on the network.

In the early hours of this morning, engineers restored power to all 22,000 properties affected by the initial power cut, using generators and reconfiguring the network around the damaged cables.

Electricity North West incident manager, Mark Williamson, said: “The work to repair the damaged cables has proved exceptionally technical and complicated due to the amount of damage caused and the location of the damage.

“We had been hoping to repair the cables and switch customers from the generators back to the main network, but it is looking likely that we will keep the generators on until Thursday to support the resilience of our network whilst the repairs continue.

“To reduce pressure on the network I’d like to ask all people in the area with power to conserve it as much as possible. This will help prevent further power cuts and reduce pressure on the remaining network and generators. This is a difficult situation for all of us and we need your help as we continue doing all we can to get things back to normal as quickly and safely as possible.”

There are currently 13 large generators supplying power to around 2,600 properties in the area, and Electricity North West has teams working on site to ensure the fuel for them is topped up.

Electricity North West has contacted hundreds of customers on its Priority Service Register to offer extra help to those who need it.

Regular updates are being posted by Electricity North West on Twitter and Facebook.

Photos show: Electricity North West engineers working to repair the damaged cables. The state of the cables following the damage.