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Gale-force winds pound peninsula
06.10.09
Thousands left without
power in 12-hour storm:
by Linda McGrory
SEVERAL thousand homes were left without power in
Greencastle and Moville on Saturday after gale-force
winds battered the peninsula during a storm that
lasted twelve hours.
The first storm of the season struck on Friday night
with high winds persisting until Saturday afternoon.
The highest gust - 104kph - was recorded at Malin
Head at 8am on Saturday, according to Met Eireann.
Homeowners in Greencastle and parts of Moville were
caught unawares with a major power cut that started
around 10.30am and lasted for more than four hours
in some areas. At least one bank machine in Moville
town lost power for a time leaving some people
caught out for cash. |
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| ESB spokesman
Michael O'Malley said the outage was caused by a
tree branch falling on a powerline near Greencastle
village. He said ESB staff first had to pinpoint the
cause of the fault before the fallen branch was
finally located and the fault repaired. |
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"At different times
over the weekend we had between ten and fifteen
faults reported throughout Inishowen but the worst
one by far was in Greencastle," said Mr O'Malley.
There were also outages reported in Redcastle on
Saturday |
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morning. In a separate
incident yesterday, up to 1,100 homes in the Malin
Head area were hit with a power cut around 9.30am.
By noon, around 600 homes had their service
restored. Mr O'Malley said it was not clear what
caused yesterday's major fault in the Malin Head
area as the weekend storm had long since subsided.
Meanwhile, Met Eireann meteorologist Hugh Daly
confirmed that the strongest gust recorded at the
Malin Head Weather Station was 104kph, or 56 knots,
at 8am on Saturday. He said a unique feature of the
storm was its duration and persistent strong winds.
"This was a fairly prolonged storm that picked up
just before midnight and didn't start to die out
until around noon the next day," said Mr Daly. "The
high winds were steady and gale force, on average,
for most of this time." |
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