Yesterday saw the arrival of the aftermath of tropical Hurricane Bertha, which brought gale force winds and torrential rains to many parts of the UK. Both Southern Electric Power Distribution and Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution areas felt its impact.
We monitor the weather at least five days in advance, and this allows us to make sure that we have the correct number of staff and skills so that if we have a really bad storm on the way, we can deal with any powercuts that the high winds or lightning may cause.
Our preparations for Bertha's arrival began last Tuesday, when we started asking for volunteers to lend extra support in our depots and Emergency Service Centre. I have to say I was again very impressed with the high numbers of responses we had from staff across the business, with extra linesmen, tree-cutters, ESC call-takers and members of our new Community Team all volunteering to help out over the weekend. Working extra hours is sometimes seen as just being "part of the job" and I want to say how much I appreciate everyone's commitment and their willingness to give up their weekend to help our customers.
Over the course of yesterday we had around 16,000 customers off supply and, thanks to everyone's very quick responses, we were able to get them all back on by the end of the day.
As I'm writing this the rain is battering down across large parts of our network in Scotland, and this is causing flooding in some isolated areas. We've got teams out in the field working hard to restore supplies and our ESC in Perth is getting extra support from their colleagues in Walton Park.
Our efforts aren't just valued within SSE they're also appreciated by the people that really matter - our customers, some of whom have been in touch to express their gratitude as well.