Thousands of people in Cumbria who are without power are set to wait up to two days to have their power restored.
Hundreds of engineers from Electricity North West have been working to combat the effects of Storm Isha, but due to the widespread impact of the high winds, they have been tackling outages across the region.
Its live power cut information lists thousands of properties affected – and they have an estimated restoration date of Tuesday at 5pm.
The times are subject to change, but the firm issued a warning before the storm hit the UK that conditions at times may be unsafe for teams to climb so lines could not be repaired immediately.
Steph Trubshaw, Electricity North West’s customer director, said: “We’re constantly monitoring the weather and several forecasts were showing wind speeds of 70mph across the region for a prolonged period of time.
“Given the predicted forecasts, we’re anticipating the conditions will make it unsafe for teams to climb meaning restorations for some customers will be delayed.
“Where we can, we will restore properties remotely utilising the technology we have on our network but for faults that need a permanent repair, power may be off overnight and into Monday if conditions are too dangerous.
“Should that be the case, we’ll ensure regular updates are provided to those customers that are impacted and from Monday morning, we’ll have hundreds of staff responding to ensure supplies are restored.”
Electricity North West invests millions each year cutting back trees from power lines but strong winds can still cause damage and blow other debris into the network which can cause power cuts.
Teams will constantly be reviewing the weather and if conditions are safe, teams will work into the night carrying out repairs, should properties be affected, the firm said.
