London, Jan. 31, (dpa/PA Media/GNA) – Thousands of homes remained without power as back-to-back storms hampered efforts to reconnect them.
The latest, Storm Corrie, brought winds of more than 90mph to Stornoway in the Western Isles of Scotland late on Sunday.
It followed Storm Malik, which blew down trees, damaged power lines and ripped roofs off homes in the North of England and Scotland on Saturday.
According to reports, around 37,000 homes in northern Scotland were without power after the two storms which came within 48 hours of each other.
On Monday morning, Northern Powergrid said 7,000 customers were without power – 4,000 still affected by Storm Malik and another 3,000 by Corrie.
In a statement on the firm’s website, it said: “There is still a lot to do – we have around 200 incidents to restore supplies to those customers across Northumberland, County Durham and Tyne and Wear.
“We have imported additional resources into the region and we are confident that we will successfully restore supplies for the vast majority of those customers – and we intend to do everything we can to get them all done.
“There is the possibility that a small number will run into Tuesday – the weather has caused us some additional disruption overnight that we also need to handle during the course of today.”
The firm insisted it had learned lessons from November’s Storm Arwen, which led to widespread complaints about the way it communicated with customers who had lost power.
GNA