1,800 customers are still without electricity across the North East following back-to-back storms which hit the UK over the weekend.
On Saturday, Storm Malik saw winds of up to 90mph, shutting the Tyne and Wear Metro and cutting power supplies to around 80,000 people, mainly across County Durham and Northumberland.
It was followed by Storm Corrie, which brought winds of 92mph but mostly impacted the Western Islands of Scotland late on Sunday.
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Northern Powergrid has now confirmed 1,800 customers are still without power on Monday across Northumberland, County Durham and Tyne & Wear.
45,500 customers remain without power overall, with about 40,000 of them in northern Scotland.
The widespread disruption comes less than three months after Storm Arwen wreaked havoc around the North East.
Northern Powergrid said they will continue to work into the night to restore as many supplies as possible, but there is "a chance that a small number will run into Tuesday."
They are working with partners to support the communities affected, including making financial support available for people still off supply to get a hot meal and, where it is needed, to cover the cost of alternative accommodation.
A statement from the electric distribution company said: "We understand everybody wants to know when they are going to be reconnected, but the reality is there is a lot to do and the work involved is often not fully known until our teams get on site.
"Because we are working through a queue of jobs, we can’t give precise estimates of the time of restoration for all incidents because the work involved in one job has a knock-on effect on the others."
The firm insisted it had learned lessons from November’s Storm Arwen, which led to widespread complaints about the way it communicated with customers who had lost power.
It said Storm Malik was worse than forecast and led to about 80,000 people losing power, mainly in County Durham and Northumberland, but it was not as devastating as Storm Arwen as there was no snow and ice this time.
But that the restoration effort was impacted by Storm Corrie, which caused 17,000 interruptions.
Stewart Sexton, 58, from Alnwick, Northumberland, lost power for 35 hours over the weekend, having previously been badly affected by Storm Arwen.
Describing himself as “enraged”, he told the PA news agency: “It’s all about a lack of maintenance of the infrastructure and no resilience plan from Northern Powergrid.
“We have had power cuts for 298 hours since November 26, just over two months.
“By any reckoning that must be unacceptable and it indicates that there is certainly something wrong with the infrastructure around our communities, while neighbouring larger villagers didn’t lose power at all.”
Conservative MP for Berwick, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, said constituents were still complaining about poor communication regarding power cuts, adding: “I am getting reports that people are having similar issues with reporting the problem as they did with Storm Arwen.
“This is clearly not good enough and makes a difficult experience even more stressful.”
One man in County Durham said pensioners in his village were “suffering”, while another said “very few lessons had been learned” since Storm Arwen in November.
Peter Isgate, who lives in Finchale Abbey Village, County Durham, said power had been off in the residential park since 10am on Saturday and that Northern Powergrid arrived on Monday morning.
The 65-year-old council worker told the PA news agency: “The average age is around 70, 75.
“Some people have got electric hobs so they’ve got no heating at all. Most of them have got dogs so the animals are suffering, they’re suffering.
“There’s been nobody down to see them. They’ve offered to bring coffee and hot food this morning. It’s not about food, you know.You can get a takeaway or something like that.
“It’s about heat and cold, old people feel it, and it just seems like they’re getting ignored.
“There’s some people haven’t got cars, they’re past the age of driving, so they’re basically stuck here in this cold weather.”
PR worker Bryn Hylton, 45, lives in a remote farmhouse in Knitsley, County Durham.
He said: “We’re quite philosophical about the power cut itself, these things happen.
“We live in a rural location and, while you don’t expect these things, you can be quite forgiving of them.
“What annoys me the most is just the lack of communication.”
Mr Hylton added: “It’s really the lack of information – and I get they’re trying to deal with 1000s of people, but I think it seems that very few lessons have been learned in the comms since Storm Arwen and it seems to be a case of history repeating itself.”
Meanwhile, Metro workers have undertaken a huge recovery operation in the wake of widespread damage to the network caused by storm Malik.
Nexus, the public body which owns and manages Metro, said that maintenance teams had completed a vast quantity of repairs in the aftermath of the gales which shut the network completely on Saturday.
The bulk of the Metro system was back up and running for customers as usual on Monday morning, but repairs are ongoing to fix damaged overhead lines between Palmersville and Northumberland Park.
Services remain suspended from Benton to Monkseaton and a limited replacement bus service is operating and Metro tickets are accepted on local bus services.
Chief Operating Officer at Nexus, Martin Kearney, said: “Our workforce has once again risen to the challenge of another major storm, which caused widespread damage to the Metro network.
“Our teams were dealing with three incidents of fallen trees, downed and damaged overhead wires in North Tyneside, debris on overhead lines and other debris blown on to tracks.
“It was a really challenging weekend. The focus now is restoring the service between Benton and Monkseaton, and those works remain ongoing.”
The weekend storms caused two fatalities: a nine-year-old boy in Staffordshire and a 60-year-old woman in Aberdeen died after trees were torn down on Saturday.
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