Damage/Safety tasks get the highest priority, with a
'Must attend by' time of (from memory) ..... two hours. This may have changed ??.
Our manual 'Controllers' will start ringing around the engineers the minute one drops onto their terminals, and/or send out a communal text message to the engineers in the reported area.
A couple of things to consider though are, if it is a 'Damage report', the job of the first engineer to site is purely to make the area safe. For example, if it's a dropwire (A wire from pole to pole, or pole to house) reported as 'Brought down' ....... then all we will do is cut and clear the wire. The EU will still have to report the fault to their ISP.
The job you mention here could have been similar ?? They may well have despatched a CAL/OMI skilled engineer (Not someone who works on cable joints), to make the area safe ........ you have landed lucky in that the relevant skilled engineer arrived, and seeing as it was probably a 10 minute job, decided to do the repair whilst 'on' the damage task.
There are too many scenario's to run through to give a definitive 'Which way is best to report a fault' ......... for example, the exposed joint may well have not been where the actual fault was. looking at your photo, there was a damned good chance though.