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Power has been restored to thousands of homes after Storm Otto battered Scotland and the north of England.
Wind speeds of up to 85mph left almost 60,000 households without power on Friday (17 February).
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said fallen trees, branches and windblown debris resulted in a “significant number of faults” across its high voltage network in Scotland, while Northern Powergrid was also hit hard.
As of 9am on Sunday (19 February) SSEN said there were fewer than 100 properties still off supply, with power having been restored to more than 43,000 homes.
Mark Rough, operations director at SSEN Distribution, said: “After further progress reconnecting customers late last light, our teams have been back out since first light this morning in the final push to repair damage and restore power to those remaining customers who remain off supply.
“We expect to make good progress throughout the course of today and remain confident all customers will be back reconnected by this evening at the latest.”
Meanwhile, Northern Powergrid managed to reconnect all the 21,000 homes affected by the end of Friday.
Louise Lowes, head of customer service for Northern Powergird, said: “Heading into Storm Otto we knew how important it was to prepare not only our teams but our customers for the potential damage across our network. We have experienced high volumes into our Customer Service teams, however, we implemented many of the lessons learnt from previous storms, listening to customer feedback to deliver a pro-active, accessible service. Our teams worked together, many out of their usual roles to put our customers first. I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved today”
Elsewhere Yorkshire Water said the storm has had an impact on some of its assets.
A spokesperson said: “Some of our sites in North Yorkshire saw wind speeds of 71mph on Friday morning and a few assets did lose mains power.
“We managed the impact by rerouting parts of our network and using alternative power sources where needed. The majority of our sites are now back to normal, with minimal impact to customers.
“We’ve been working closely with Northern Powergrid to understand risks and the timescales for fixing faults, and will continue to do so throughout the weekend.”
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