Opinion: Storm Arwen was a stark reminder to plan for emergencies
© NFU Greetings from the frozen North – where some of us are feeling rather battered by the stormy weather and the subsequent loss of power, which for some people lasted more than a week.
We knew it must be bad when the local TV news programmes spent several nights broadcasting live from Wooler, a small town not normally known as a centre for breaking news.
Storm Arwen resulted in numerous fallen trees across Northumberland, affecting woods which have withstood gales and high winds for as long as anyone can remember.
I’m told that on this occasion, the wind was coming from an unusual direction, causing an unusual level of damage.
See also: Recent storms caused ‘catastrophic’ damage on farms
At our place, none of the animals were hurt or buildings damaged, but trees fell on our power supply cable and pulled it out of the house wall.
Indeed, it is still dangling outside the back door as I write.
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We were fortunate that it didn’t actually break – a case of down, but not out – so our power was only off for the same time as the local area (about 72 hours in two separate incidents).
But our business is not an intensive power user, so we do not have a generator as back-up.
We are hoping there isn’t any further damage to the line before it gets fixed; 72 hours without power is quite enough for one winter.
The scale of the disruption seems to have rather caught our power distributor on the hop and there are calls for an enquiry.
Issues which might have to be addressed include:
- Whether there has been enough investment in maintaining the lines, infrastructure and general resilience in rural areas
- Whether there was adequate contingency planning
- Whether there is sufficient provision for engineers in an emergency.
I would also note that the communication process was abysmal.
This could and should be improved very easily. It was initially impossible to report the damage, or to check whether the distributors were aware that we had no power.
So tough luck on anyone on their own without any means of keeping warm…
The helpline for loss of supply just played a recorded message and referred us to the website.
We found ourselves short of: logs, proper candles, camping gas, food which doesn’t go off, hot water bottles and spare batteries.
However, we don’t have internet access without power. Furthermore, on this occasion we had to drive for 20 miles to get a mobile phone signal, because local phone masts also seemed to be off.
The emergency line for dangerous situations and damage to cables was permanently engaged on the night of the storm.
I eventually got through the next morning after waiting for 50 minutes on a line playing strange on-hold music, which made me wonder if I was actually going to speak to Northern Powergrid at all, or had just been diverted to some premium phoneline scam.
I have also conducted an internal review of our own contingency planning. In short, we hadn’t really done any because we’ve been so busy with all the normal jobs.
We found ourselves short of: logs, proper candles, camping gas, food which doesn’t go off, hot water bottles and spare batteries.
So, that’s the Christmas list sorted. Next time we’ll try to be better prepared – but so too should the power companies.