Well over 1,000 ‘incidents’, mostly involving falling trees
More than 300,000 households and businesses were without power early this morning due to bad weather – mainly affecting the north – as tropical storm Kirk bowls across the country.
In a statement sent to Lusa, the EDP group company said that around 05:00 today, the effects of the storm began to cause major constraints on the electricity grid, most severely affecting the districts of Viana do Castelo, Braga, Porto and Aveiro and a more moderate impact in the districts of Viseu and Vila Real.
“We’re still experiencing a lot of disruption and at this point we can’t predict when it will be fully restored, something we’ll monitor and report on throughout the day,” the company said, adding that 800 operatives are mobilised on the ground.
The company says that at 7.30am around 250,000 customers were without power, at 8.30am around 400,000 customers and at 9.30am 314,000 customers.
E-Redes says it activated the Operational Crisis Action Plan at 21:00 on Tuesday, in close liaison with civil protection and other authorities.
E-Redes is the EDP group company responsible for operating low, medium and high voltage electricity distribution network in mainland Portugal.
As a result of the bad weather, particularly super strong winds (we’re talking ‘peak gusts of up to 140-150km/h’ in some places), the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC) recorded 1,329 incidents between 6pm on Tuesday and 9am today, the vast majority of them falling trees.
Roads have been obstructed, train services affected, and in Vila Nova de Gaia a three-story block of apartments has been damaged by a falling crane, requiring the temporary re-housing of a family of four.
So far, miraculously, there have been no reports of people being injured.
Just as this report went up online, however, the river Vez, in Arcos de Valdevez, burst its banks and flooded the historic centre of Valeta, a car park and a hotel.
Local civil protection chief Olegário Gonçalves has told Lusa: “there are three bridges closed, two municipal pavilions flooded”, stressing this is “one of the worst floods (we have suffered) in recent years”.
According to meteorologists, conditions are expected to get worse, before they get better: this afternoon coastal yellow alerts move up a notch to orange, with warnings to people to keep away from the sea, particularly in the north, until the early hours of Friday.
Kirk is ‘moving on to France’, already causing damages in Spain. It began last week as a major hurricane, moving between Bermuda in the Caribbean to the Azores over the weekend. It even reached category 4 status on the Saffir Simpson Scale for a brief time, but is now essentially a ‘regular tropical storm’.
Chartered meteorologist Lars Lowinski has told Euronews that it’s not clear how much damage Kirk will clock up as it pounds the western coast of Europe (meaning north and to a lesser extent central Portugal/ parts of Spain and France). “Very strong winds are likely to affect a large corridor from the Bay of Biscay coast to eastern France, northwest Switzerland and then southwest Germany later on Thursday,” he said.
For now, the south of Portugal has been barely affected.
Source material: LUSA/ Euronews
