The Baltic States were devastated by a severe storm over the weekend.
ESTONIA
The storm, forecasted to last until Sunday evening, has brought over 1,400 calls to rescuers and left over 37,650 households without electricity, according to the Rescue Board.
The storm, which began on Friday afternoon, has resulted in rescuers responding to 1,415 calls, 259 of which were made on Sunday morning alone. Numerous trees have fallen on roads and rescuers are working on removing them. Flooding was anticipated in Northern Estonia, and the water level in the Pirita city district of Tallinn reached a critical threshold on Saturday evening without resulting in an overflow, however.
As of midday Sunday, 31,731 customers were without electricity. The number of customers without power was largest in Harju County and West-Viru County, 10,481 and 3,761 respectively. Efforts to eliminate outages are ongoing, however, as power lines cannot be repaired during the storm, connections are primarily being restored through rerouting.
Meelis Mesi from the Rescue Board said that the storm has most severely battered Tallinn and Harju County, where a total of 514 calls have been made to rescuers. In the Western region, emergency response teams have acted 421 times, in the Eastern region 271 times, and in the Southern region 209 times.
“Rescue resources have primarily been occupied with trees fallen on roads and power lines, but we have begun to provide support to local governments both in terms of sharing information and creating a situation report regarding power outages,” Mesi explained.
LATVIA
At around 1 p.m. on Sunday, power supply was disrupted for 10,400 households across Latvia, Sadales Tikls power distribution company informed LETA.
Sunday morning at 7 a.m., about 18,000 households were left without electricity in Latvia.
Most power outages were registered in Ropazi, Saulkrasti and Limbazi regions. Sadales Tikls crews continue work to restore power supply to customers.
Strong winds damaged the power grid mostly in coastal regions as well as in the central part of Latvia, where falling trees and branches snapped power lines and several power poles were toppled.
LIHUANIA
Power restored to over 30,000 Lithuanian households, 5,500 still without electricity.
Some 5,500 households in Lithuania were still without electricity on Monday morning after strong winds toppled trees and damaged power lines over the weekend, the power distribution company Energijos Skirstymo Operatorius (ESO) said,
ESO spokeswoman Rasa Juodkiene told BNS that power supply had been restored to over 30,000 customers overnight.
“An incredible amount of work was done overnight: we have 5,500 (consumers without electricity) today, instead of 36,000,” she said.
Juodkiene said that the worst situation was in the regions of Vilnius and Alytus, each with around 2,000 consumers without electricity on Monday morning.
Source: BNS
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