Storm Corrie: Thousands of homes still without power after chaotic weekend storms

31 January 2022, 08:47 | Updated: 1 February 2022, 07:51

Thousands of homes remain without power and a number of schools were forced to shut after back to back storms battered Scotland and north-east England over the weekend.

Storm Malik and Storm Corrie hit in quick succession over the weekend, bringing devastating winds which blew down trees, damaged power lines and ripped roofs off homes.

Around 17,000 homes in Scotland were still without power on Monday evening, after gale force winds knocked out supplies.

Rural Aberdeenshire and the Angus border are the main areas affected.

The Scottish Government said that of the 115,847 households that lost power as a result of both storms, all but around 7,000 are expected to be reconnected on Monday evening.

Power companies are confident that the vast majority of those affected should be reconnected by Tuesday, but recognise there may still be some outages going into Wednesday.

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Northern Powergrid said in a statement on Monday: "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."

Northern 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.

It said Malik was worse than forecast and led to around 80,000 people losing power - mainly in County Durham and Northumberland - but it was not as devastating as Arwen as there was no snow and ice this time.

Richard Gough, of Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), said "we expect the full restoration of customer supplies from both storms to extend into the early part of next week".

Hospitality worker Clare Stirling-Turnbull, 47, of Powburn, Northumberland, said earlier she had without heating and electricity since 9am on Saturday.

To make matters worse, one of the children in her family of six has Covid and is currently isolating.

She said: "So we can't go to relatives' houses... we have no electric, no heating or hot water - we do have a wood burner so can heat one room."

The family was "well prepared" thanks to a gas barbeque, candle and hot water bottles, she said.

The Met Office issued a warning for ice across northern Scotland and another for wind in north-east England on Monday morning.

The ice warning covered Grampian, Highlands and Eilean Siar, Strathclyde and Fife amid falling temperatures.

Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill said: "It is not just the case of strong winds causing problems - there is also the ice risk across parts of Scotland through to the early part of Monday morning.

"There will be some wintry showers. Emergency services are trying to get out, utility companies are trying to make repairs and so the icy conditions are not going to make that easier for them."

Several schools in Aberdeenshire said they would be shut or delay opening on Monday as they struggled with power and heating problems.

Two people, a nine-year-old boy in Staffordshire and 60-year-old woman in Aberdeen, were killed by falling trees as Malik hit on Saturday.

Corrie hit a day later and its gusts are set to slowly move away on Monday morning.

The strongest gust during Malik was 93mph in Brizlee Wood, Northumberland, on Saturday morning but there were also winds that hit 80mph over wide areas of Scotland, and 70mph in the north of England throughout the day.

Mr Burkill said: "That is exceptionally strong for any time of the year and there is no wonder there were significant impacts such as power outages and damage to buildings. It is very unfortunate that things were worse than that for some people."

Corrie moved eastwards across Scotland on Sunday and was set to push across the North Sea in the early hours of Monday.

Winds of 92mph were recorded in Stornoway, on the Western Isles, as the storm began to hit the UK on Sunday night.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the impact of Corrie was "likely to be significant".

She tweeted on Sunday: "Work to repair the damage from Storm Malik continues. Tens of thousands have had power reconnected already - however, many will remain off supply again tonight and some, especially in north east, could be off into Tuesday. Welfare arrangements are in place.

"Special arrangements remain in place for vulnerable customers and local resilience partnerships continue to work with councils to provide welfare support."

ScotRail said it withdrew all of its services on Sunday night in an effort to "protect passengers and railway staff".

Network Rail Scotland, which said that "all parts of the railway are working together", added that any other trains that ran on Sunday night had a maximum speed of 40mph.