Storm Darragh Causes Widespread Power Outages, Isolating Communities

More than 2,000 homes and businesses are still without electricity following Storm Darragh’s impact on the country over the weekend. Some residents in Somerset have experienced a lack of power and internet connectivity for three days. The village of Porlock, for example, endured a 30-hour power outage, with electricity supply being interrupted again on Monday for approximately six hours. Deborah Stanyon, from the Porlock Information Centre, expressed her concern, stating: “I was so concerned because we are an elderly population here in our village and there would be people here who were frail and vulnerable who had no back-up heating.” Ms. Stanyon further noted that the power outage also caused internet service to fail, and many villagers no longer possessed landline telephones. She emphasized, “All forms of communication have gone down,” adding, “It really was the most incredible feeling of being isolated.” She concluded her remarks by saying, “We have to think about our local businesses and local economy but what concerns me most is how reliant we are completely on electric.” Andrew Tizzard, a resident of Othery, reported that although power had been restored to his village, internet connectivity remained unavailable. He commented, “The internet is something we tend to rely on heavily these days.” He further mentioned that certain areas of Othery had been without internet service since Saturday. Mr. Tizzard stated, “We can’t work, we have no mobile signal and we have an elderly, vulnerable section of our community and they are completely isolated.” Last year, Ofgem raised the storm compensation cap from £700 to £2,000. This decision followed the conclusions of its review regarding the response to Storm Arwen. Dan Fancy, a specialist energy advisor affiliated with a Citizens Advice Bureau in the South West, indicated that their office had experienced a high volume of activity during the severe weather event. He explained, “There are compensation schemes through the guaranteed services procedure.” He clarified, “It depends on what category the storm is. Most people should receive it automatically.” Roisin Quinn, representing National Grid, stated: “It was the worst storm we’ve seen for seven years so we had a really significant number of faults – things like trees blowing down and landing on power lines.” She added, “We work really hard to make sure our network is as resilient as possible. We have an annual programme of tree cutting right across our patch.” For updates, follow BBC Somerset on Facebook and X. Story ideas can be submitted via email or WhatsApp at 0800 313 4630. Copyright 2024 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC disclaims responsibility for the content of external websites. Information regarding the BBC’s approach to external linking is available.