Power restored to all Shetland homes after weather destroyed lines

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Power has been restored to all homes on Shetland after thousands of properties were left disconnected due to the cold snap, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) Distribution has confirmed.

More than 5,000 homes lost electricity this week as a major incident was declared on the islands after heavy snow downed power lines.

On Sunday morning, SSEN said just 118 homes were still to be reconnected, 24 from the original fault and 94 because of a secondary fault on Saturday night.Keith Brown - Justice Secretary and lead minister for resilience in the Scottish Government - expressed his "sincere thanks" to those who played a part in bringing power back to impacted homes."The exceptional weather conditions in parts of Shetland led to complex damage to the power network which was very challenging to restore," he said."Throughout the recovery effort, the Scottish Government resilience room (SGoRR) met on several occasions, alongside ongoing discussions with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) and other partners."I want to extend my sincere thanks to all our partners for the vital roles they have played in the recovery effort.

From the hundreds of SSEN engineers, and supporting companies, SP Energy Networks, Northern Power Grid and BT, working round the clock to get people reconnected, to Police Scotland, Shetland Islands Council and local resilience partnerships who provided essential advice and welfare support to those affected."In particular, the local communities which stepped up to support those around them, providing shelter, warm spaces and hot food cannot be commended highly enough."The minister described the reconnection efforts as "remarkable", adding that the response will be reviewed ahead of