Electrical Services

The sign at Kilchoan's Cal Mac pier rarely show services cancelled as our little ferry to Tobermory often runs when the big ones of the Oban to the isles services are safely tucked up in port - but this was at the height of Thursday's storm. At about this time the peninsula's electricity died, and we joined the estimated 100,000 other homes along the west coast of Scotland which had lost their supply. We know we're at the end of a very long line, and we're a small community, so we don't expect to get our power back quickly. The community therefore immediately sets about looking after it's older and more vulnerable members: we have a 95-year old aunt who lives in an all-electric house, so she came up to stay with us.

Through Thursday and Friday we had intermittent mobile signals, with some providers doing better than others. With several of us having lost our land lines through the lightning earlier in the week, this posed some problems.

On Friday evening, because of the lack of power, the water supply to Kilchoan village went off. Scottish Water got a generator down the road by Saturday midday, so the water was back on to a very unhappy community in the early afternoon. Apparently, Hydro Electric had also sent generators down the road, but they were late arriving as they became stuck by the narrow bridge at Resipole, and one went off the road. They finally arrived but spent their time parked by the Cal Mac pier.

At lunch time on Saturday a Hydro Electric helicopter appeared and flew low over the village, which everyone took to be a good sign. It wasn't, as they identified several breaks in the lines which had to be fixed before the power supply could be restored. This finally happened about 8.00pm, but the supply died again soon after midnight. By this time Kichoan was national news, so Mr Hughie MacLachlan, our media spokesman, appeared on BBC1 Scotland news to tell the world how serious things were down here.

The cause of the latest break was a fire on a pole at Caim. Kilchoan Fire Brigade, having ensured that the electricity supply was safely off, dealt with the fire, but the village was, once again, plunged into darkness. The picture here shows the electricity engineers working on the damaged line at midday today. As can be seen from the colours of the vehicles, they had come from all over the UK. We spoke to the men in the white pickup: they were from mid Wales. Others who have helped us were English, Irish and.... Polish.

Power is restored. Most people's phone lines work, if not perfectly - ours still dislikes incoming calls. New routers are arriving in the post for people like us who lost theirs in the lightning strike. The village is getting back to normal, but there are gales forecast for Tuesday afternoon and Thursday evening.

Special thanks to all the electricity engineers who worked so hard to get our power back, often in atrocious conditions.