John Swinney has said reconnecting power in Scotland following Storm Eowyn has been a “colossal” task. The First Minister also said the impact of the storm is a “warning that climate change is with us”.
Gusts hit 100mph north of the border as high winds caused damage across the country on Friday, disrupting travel and damaging property. Tens of thousands of homes were left without power due to the storm, with almost 8,000 homes still cut off on Monday morning.
Speaking at an event in Edinburgh, the FM said he had been tracking the situation over the weekend.
“The scale of the challenge has been colossal, utterly colossal,” he said. “Although there are 7,897 people off supply, the number that have been reconnected is in excess of 180,000 since Friday evening.”
He added: “I have been engaged with the resilience community and the power companies all weekend and I’m satisfied that there has been a huge mobilisation of resource to try to address this issue.
“It’s a warning to us that climate change is with us and the ferocity (of it). If you look at the rail map of what lines are still affected, you can see west-central Scotland is severely, badly effected because of the ferocity of the storms.”
Train operator ScotRail reported it had received reports of 500 incidents across its network and more than 120 trees having fallen onto tracks.
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