Hundreds of residents in the Burnham-On-Sea area are still without power following Storm Eunice — and some may have to wait until Tuesday to be reconnected.
Western Power Distribution, which provides power to the area, says it is “working hard” to restore electricity to over 14,000 customers across the region and “will keep working until the lights are back on for everyone.”
The company said over 300 properties were without power across our area on Sunday evening, including in Burnham, Highbridge, the Huntspills, Brean, Edingworth, Biddisham and Berrow.
Many of the properties affected are in West and East Huntspill where over 200 homes are without power. It comes after trees were brought down during Friday’s exceptionally high winds.
Katie Berry, a West Huntspill resident, told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “We’ve been without power since 10.38am on Friday morning and have been told by Western Power that they may not be able to restore supplies until Tuesday afternoon.”
”24 hours you can cope with, but three days is an incredibly long time. We’ve got family who are helping us out, but others may not be so fortunate and our thoughts are with them. Western Power are incredibly busy and are doing a great job after such extreme weather.”
Western Power Operations Director Graham Halladay said: “Storm Eunice has brought some of the worst conditions we have ever seen – it is truly unprecedented. But I would like to reassure customers that we are working round the clock to get the lights back on as quickly as we can safely do so.”
“The scale of the destruction means that engineers are still finding it difficult to access faults and there is still a lot of debris to clear before individual repairs can begin. We are sorry it is taking so long. We are on the case and we shall remain on the case until all supplies are restored.”
“We have nearly 850 individual power cuts that we are working on. Unfortunately, we have to clear the fallen trees and debris before we can assess what needs to be done and carry out the repair. We have brought in extra teams to help.”
Western Power Distribution spokesman Michael Clark told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “The storm on Friday caused considerable damage to our network and further high winds this weekend have not helped the teams restore supplies,” he said. “We have seeen fallen trees and debris causing further issues.”
“Where possible, we are restoring power to customers in phases as soon as possible and we would ask customers to check the Western Power website for restoration updates.”
Storm Eunice has officially caused the highest number of power cuts in a 24 hour period that the South West region has ever experienced.
PHOTOS: Clean-up starts after Storm Eunice left disruption in Burnham area
