Power cuts in Unst, Fetlar and Bressay

TWENTY seven households in the Baliasta area of Unst will have to wait until lunchtime to have their electricity restored after severe southerly gales brought disruptions to island life on Sunday.

At the height of the storm more that 800 customers in Unst, Bressay and Fetlar were without power, while inter island ferry services were suspended and flights cancelled at Sumburgh Airport. The NorthLink ferries also stayed in port.

Scottish and Southern Energy said its network had to withstand gust of over 80 miles per hour.

Power first went off on Unst at 5.10pm, followed by Fetlar at 5.40pm and Bressay an hour later.

An SSEN spokesman said all outages were caused by faults to the overhead network due to the very high winds.

Electricity was restored in stages, either remotely or by engineers going out to fix the faults. The Bressay ferry made an extra run in poor conditions to get engineers to the island.

Power was restored to all but the 27 customers in Unst before midnight. SSEN said it would like to apologise for the inconvenience.

Loganair said it had to stop flying from mid afternoon due to the high winds. A total of eight flights to and from Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Orkney were cancelled.

Meanwhile, ferry operator NorthLink said that its Monday night sailing from Lerwick to Aberdeen would leave Shetland already at 5pm, two hours earlier that scheduled, due to a bad forecast.