Lightning strike caused South Mainland power outage

A lightning strike was the cause of a power outage to hundreds of homes in the South Mainland on the weekend.

The lightning strike on Saturday just before 6pm damaged a transformer on SSEN Distribution’s overhead network in Wester Quarff.

This resulted in the loss of power for 344 of its customers in Quarff, Wester Quarff and Gulberwick.

Power was restored to 314 of those customers within 24 minutes.

On-site engineers replaced the damaged transformer and returned power to the remaining 30 customers by 1.37am on Sunday morning.