Emergency arrangements after mass central heating cutoff 23/12/11
Thousands of island homes are without electric storage heating after a large scale blackout resulted when a forestry harvester vehicle hit a live powerline off the A87 south of Broadford, on Skye yesterday.
Haulage contractor John Mackinnon, 65, of Crossal on Skye, died in the accident. Police inquiries are continuing into the incident.
About 30,000 properties were hit with all of the Western Isles and Skye cut off. Local diesel power stations were fired up to restore a reduced supply to homes.
Scottish and Southern Electricity (SSE) shipped mobile generators over on the Stornoway ferry last night to boost supplies and balance the network in Laxay and Harris.
The Western Isles is presently on a temporary, restricted electricity supply.
Utility company SSE switched off all storage heaters in the islands on Thursday night in a bid to cut down on energy useage.
It means affected homes have been without central heating for 24 hours until the
grid is powered up -
Western Isles Council, along with the NHS and SSE said it will deal with requests from any vulnerable persons needing temporary replacement heating. However, it will only distribute portable heaters if storage heaters are not restored tonight.
All such requests, either from individuals themselves, carers, family or concerned neighbours should contact Faire on 01851 701 702.
A spokesperson highlighted this only affects people with electric storage heating systems.
A SSE spokesperson said it switched off the signal to all electric storage heaters in the Western Isle to conserve the use of electicity. It plans to switch the signal back on when the gird is back working at full capacity, hopefully, tonight