“Gas safety is paramount and when people find themselves without heating or hot water, desperation can take over.”
Andy Pritchard, Gas Engineer
He worked 15-hour days, crawled into tight spaces, risked being infected with Covid-19 every day and changed people’s lives with each visit to their house. He’s not a doctor or nurse, not a teacher or a supermarket worker. But he was a key worker. He is a gas engineer. An unsung hero of the pandemic.
At the height of the 2020 lockdown, Andy Pritchard would get home no earlier than 9 o’clock every night. After hours on his hands and knees working on boilers, showers, and gas fires, he would return and rid himself of his possibly Covid infected work clothes in the porch and then slump up the stairs to the shower in exhaustion. In the morning he would leave at 8.30am to do it all over again.
Even though every engineer was required to wear a mask and gloves to each job, there was still a high risk of Andy catching it himself. When asked if that made him anxious he said, “I go into 8, 9, 10 houses a day and it would only take one to infect me and make me a spreader, that was always in the back of my head.”
Despite this, Andy continued to go to work and stressed the importance of engineers getting out to jobs. “Gas safety certificates are legally required for every household with gas appliances. If we don’t work, there can be a serious risk of safety and danger of gas leaks. Not to mention the frustration of not having any hot water or heating.”
Most people he would visit were incredibly grateful when Andy knocked on their door, but he would often be turned away due to a member of a household testing positive for Covid-19. But people can get desperate. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I entered properties with a positive case but they didn’t want to declare it because they wanted to get their heating sorted. No-one wants to sit and wait for ten days without any heating or hot water.”
Engineers may not get a lot of praise on the news, and Andy’s not the kind of person to want any either. He says the appreciation from customers makes it all worth it, “job satisfaction is why I’m still working in this industry. I would say 8 out of 10 of the households I see are massively grateful and can’t thank me enough.”
