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74,000 HOMES AND businesses remain without power this morning as the work to repair the damage from Storm Ophelia continues.
ESB Networks says that it has reconnected 81% of affected premises since Monday’s deadly storm left nearly 400,000 buildings powerless.
All emergency service and hospital facilities have been reconnected, the company says.
“We have prioritised emergency services and hospitals, These have now all been restored and water treatment and waste plants, where there has been huge progress.
“We recognise the great work by the farming organisations and farmers especially who have come together to share equipment and resources such as generators.”
A further update will issue at around noon.
As of 4pm yesterday, 25,000 people were without water, down from a high of 109,000.
While 260,000 had been at risk of losing their water supply, that is down to 2,000.
Counties worst affected by the outages are Cork, Waterford and Wexford.
“While progress has been significant and is continuing, it is clear that some of the very smaller schemes with fewer than 1,000 people will take longer to get back on track and these more remote areas will take longer to get power back.
“Some of these smaller water treatment plants are not suitable for generators so Irish Water is coordinating with the local authorities to ensure that water is provided for the local population with tankers.”
Eir estimates that around 50,000 customers are without phone, broadband and mobile services.
“The southern half of the country continues to be the worst affected area. The counties with the highest amount of customers without service are: Cork (15,980); Wexford (6,112) and Limerick (3,965).
“We expect the total number of customers without service will continue to reduce as power supply issues are resolved.”
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The crews are working their backsides off in fairness to them. It’s absolute misery being without power and water, in a lot of cases people are double whammied due to wells, pumping stations etc being knocked out. Our increasing dependency on electricity became very evident to me when we were without it for a few days this week and begs the question, should the esb be looking at under-grounding a substantial amount of our supply for safety and continuity reasons?
@mcgoo: I am thinking trees should not be along roadsides where ESB cables usually run. There is a need to rethink about positioning due to the deaths and damage trees have done.
@Tony Hartigan: Or even burying them below ground.
@Tony Skillington: Cost would be too high to bury the existing cables but future builds should ensure this is done.
How exciting to be part of a news article like this LOL. Looking forward to getting power back. Unfortunately all the food in the fridge and freezer is gone. Otherwise we are managing well. I do miss my morning cuppa (or two) and definitely have a caffeine addiction as I have a lovely headache!!
@Seeking Truth: if the food in your fridge has thawed out why not contact Cork Penny Dinners they may have a use for it.
@Seeking Truth: Really food gone off so quick, I look in my fridge and nothing I think would be inedible in 2 days. The freezer will hold cold for 36 hours or so..Grill and eat before it thaws..
@Joe Clery: I would be nervous about eating ham and cheese and drinking milk that was not cool to the touch. Not trying to be wasteful just trying to be realistic. It has been 72 hours now. Hopefully a few things in the freezer are still useable but not the ice cream LOL
@Seeking Truth: cook the food if you can, you’ll get a bit longer with it them.
I cooked pizza on a frying pan…. :)
All thanks to that nixer Leo did yesterday,
Some places in cork are being told Tuesday now for power :(
Got my power back in East Cork yesterday. It was horrific without it. I actually had to talk to the missus.
Thanks to the Esb workers for restoring the power so quickly given the large scale damage we suffered here and spare a thought for them out in such awful conditions today.
Here’s my place after it hit. Only superficial damage.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/144468801@N05/37118878533/in/dateposted-friend/
Still no power here in mallow..not one sign of an esb truck..all the food in freezer is only fit for the bin..im sorry to say I’m not one bit happy about the speed of how this was handled .. I cannot get through to customer service..
They’ve gone so far as to pull crews in from other countries, exactly how much faster do you think they can work? Is your memory gone or can you remember that storm that has literally destroyed their infrastructure, necessitating huge repairs or complete rebuilds in some cases? Yes it sucks that you have to deal with a power outage but have some respect for the enormous workload that the ESB have to get through
Well done to the Esb workers and don’t forget the subcontractors that they bring in too. Tough job in these conditions
Fairplay to the ESB on this, very well handled.
I know it’s a pain to be without electricity for most of the week but look at the time it took Florida to get power back to business and homes after their recent hurricanes.
ESB will get a hard time from people about wasted food in freezers and the likes, but there’s only so much they can do in one day. Keep up the good work!
Been told it will be Sunday night before get electricity back
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