The Army has been deployed to help residents who have been without power for a week since Storm Arwen caused “catastrophic damage” to the electricity network.
Around 130 troops have been sent to carry out door-to-door checks and offer welfare support in north-east of Scotland, where 1,600 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) customers remained off supply at 7am on Friday.
Jim Savage, chief executive of Aberdeenshire Council, said SSEN told him it hopes to get the number of customers off power down to 1,000 on Friday, though some may not be reconnected until the weekend.
He told BBC Breakfast: “It’s been a really tough week for families and communities across all of Aberdeenshire. There has been an amazing effort of support from communities and emergency services here to make sure people are safe as we look to get the power back on as soon as we can.”
He added: “SSEN have got many hundreds of their staff out on the ground and have been going through all of the lines they’ve got and fixing and repairing as they go, and in the meantime many other services are making sure the communities are safe, they’ve got what they need in terms of whatever food and heating and support and accommodation we can provide.
“I think the really unfortunate thing is we think there’s still going to be people who are going to be off into the weekend, so we continue to ramp up and do whatever more we can do to support people in what has been a very extended period of time with that national infrastructure having gone down.”
Aberdeenshire Council said that in its area the Army will be based out of police stations in Ellon, Turiff, Inverurie and Banchory, with three teams of 10 at each.
SSEN said power has been restored to more than 129,000 customers since Storm Arwen first struck, causing what managing director Chris Burchell described as “catastrophic damage to the electricity network”.
The company said properties still without power are mainly located in rural and isolated communities, with Aberdeenshire the main area still affected.
UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “We are always ready to provide extra support to civil authorities across the UK in their time of need and it’s great to see units based in Scotland supporting their local communities.
“Our dedicated armed forces will conduct door-to-door checks on people in their homes, providing essential support to those impacted by Storm Arwen.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel