Storm Malik and Corrie: Thousands of homes without power after weekend storms - BBC News
Suppliers try to restore power after Storms Malik and Corrie hit Scotland and northern England.
A house in Bensham, Gateshead, where the roof was blown off during Storm Malik

Thousands of households are still without power in Scotland and north-east England, after two storms hit the UK at the weekend.

Storms Malik and Corrie caused power cuts for 118,000 homes in Scotland and 80,000 in northern England.

On Monday evening, around 18,100 remained without power.

On Saturday, two people were killed by falling trees - a boy in Staffordshire and a woman in Aberdeen.

Several schools in Aberdeenshire, the Highlands and Moray were closed on Monday due to storm damage or power outages.

And there has been major disruption to rail services between Edinburgh and Newcastle - with some lines closed on Monday morning.

Much of Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England was under a yellow Met Office warning for wind over the weekend.

Gusts of 92mph were recorded on Sunday night at Stornoway in the Western Isles.

There is another yellow warning in place for parts of northern Scotland on Tuesday between 06:00 GMT and 18:00, with gusts of up to 65mph expected.

But the Met Office said the next few days would be much calmer before a brief cold snap on Thursday.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said about 16,900 were still without power on Monday evening, mostly in rural Aberdeenshire and the Angus border, while Northern Powergrid said 1,200 customers were without power across Northumberland, County Durham and Tyne & Wear.

SSEN said restoration efforts would continue into Tuesday, with the possibility that for "small clusters" of customers this may extend into Wednesday.

A van at Apperley Bridge near Bradford was crushed by a fallen tree during Storm Malik. No-one was hurt.

Douglas Morrison, 51, who lives two miles from Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he had "never seen this level of devastation" to forest areas - "I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of trees absolutely flattened and snapped like matchsticks".

He said his house had lost power at 08:00 GMT on Saturday and had come back on for a few hours on Sunday before being cut again.

"I just hope it comes on again today because as time passes it gets harder and harder because you lose your hot water, you lose the heat in your house, so let's just hope it comes on today," he said.

Look at the map of power cuts in north-east England and you would be forgiven for thinking there's an alarming lack of electricity in the region. But this is very different from the chaos of Storm Arwen last November.

This time only a small number of properties are without supply and more and more are being reconnected by the hour.

Storm Arwen swept in from the north, an unusual direction for such weather. Storm Malik came from the west, where we are used to getting our weather from. Trees in particular are more resilient to a westerly as it's the prevailing wind direction.

With Arwen, whole communities were left without power for several days - the aim for those without power now is to get them back on by the end of the day.

A few areas cut off by Arwen have been hit again this weekend - but the message from Northern Powergrid is the length of time to fix should be much quicker.

The damage is not comparable to what happened late last year.

Peter Isgate, 65, who lives in Finchale Abbey Village in County Durham, told the PA news agency power had been off at the residential park where he lived since 10:00 on Saturday.

He said that the average age there was around 70 and there were people with no heating and that nobody had been to see them.

"It's about heat and cold, old people feel it, and it just seems like they're getting ignored," he said.

Disruption to trains continued into Monday, with ScotRail replacing a number of services with buses.

The storms brought back memories of Storm Arwen which left thousands of homes without power for more than a week in Scotland and the north of England.

Stewart Sexton, 58, from Alnwick, Northumberland, lost power for 35 hours over the weekend, having previously been badly affected by Storm Arwen, and said he was "enraged".

"This situation never happened before Arwen yet we did get storms," he said, blaming a lack of maintenance of the infrastructure and a resilience plan.

Scotland's Deputy First Minister John Swinney said it was clear there had been a "much stronger join-up between the power companies and the local resilience partnerships" over the weekend.

He told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme there was an "improving situation" but said power companies and others had to explore how to build more resilience in the system.

A number of welfare centres have been opened in Aberdeenshire for people needing showers and power, while hot food is being served at various school canteens.

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