Many homes lose power due to heavy rain and lightning

Heavy rain and lightning caused a slew of minor power cuts during what a spokeswoman for Scottish and Southern Electricity called “an incredibly busy weekend” for power workers.

More than 700 customers were cut off in the Sandwick and Bigton area for two hours on Sunday morning before power was restored.

On Friday a power cut due to a broken pole had affected 330 customers in Sandwick, though the power was restored for all but 15 houses within the hour.

Engineers made a double trip to Yell on Friday to sort out separate power cuts affecting the same 50 customers. The power was off for “20 minutes” in the morning but the engineers were called back as they returned to Lerwick and had the power restored for a second time by 5pm.

The SSE spokeswoman said that the network’s auto-reclose circuit breakers had kicked in as intended to prevent more serious damage to the network and danger to customers.

She apologised to customers for any inconvenience caused by power cuts and thanked emergency workers who had put in a long and arduous weekend sorting out faults.

Meanwhile a council roadworks boss has thanked a digger driver for “single-handedly” clearing a mud slip that cut off 18 houses in Wester Quarff at the weekend.

Karl Davidson, who has family in the Quarff road, put his JCB to good use, clearing some 20 metres of road that had been buried by moor cascading from Scrae Field following heavy rain on Sunday morning.

SIC South Mainland road maintenance team leader Barry Scobie said Mr Davidson had “pretty much cleared it himself”. Further tidying up involving a truck and a digger was ongoing today, with fences being cleared and the batter being reinstated.

Roadworkers had also been busy easing flooding at Moul which had seen the road awash for several hours on Sunday. Traffic lights were set up for a time and engineers were looking at way to improve flow to the cross drains which struggled to handle the quantity of water filling the ditches.

The heavy rain saw between one and two inches of water fall in the space of 24 hours on Saturday night and Sunday. A fire engine crew attended with sandbags to prevent flooding at a commercial premises at the Greenhead Base on Sunday afternoon.