Storm leaves 220,000 Lithuanians without power

A storm that swept across Lithuania left more than 220,000 people without electricity on Sunday, while restoration work could take up to a week, LRT reported. One person died and three others were injured.

Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said the situation remained tense after a morning interinstitutional meeting on dealing with the storm’s aftermath. He said the government did not plan to declare a nationwide state of emergency, and institutions had reported that military assistance was not currently needed.

“My main message to all institutions was that we must deal with the storm’s aftermath as quickly as possible, without counting the time, human resources or potential financial costs,” Sinkevičius said.

Renaldas Radvila, head of the Energy Distribution Operator, or ESO, said the storm had disrupted electricity supplies across the country, with the greatest damage reported in the Kaunas region. About 220,000 residents remained without power on Sunday.

ESO has more than 1,000 people working to resolve the disruptions. Rasa Juodkienė, an ESO representative, previously told LRT radio that restoration work was expected to take about a week. The highest number of outages was recorded on Saturday evening, when 268,000 people were without electricity.

More than 100 generators had reached municipalities by Sunday, Radvila said.

The Emergency Response Centre received more than 24,000 calls, according to Saulius Tamulevičius, deputy director of the Fire and Rescue Department. At the peak, the centre received 14 calls per second.

Firefighters received more than 1,800 calls related to the storm. Most reports concerned trees that had fallen onto roads, cars, buildings and electricity infrastructure. The highest number of callouts was recorded in Kaunas County, where firefighters responded nearly 500 times.

Jolita Orentaitė, a representative of the Fire and Rescue Department, said the previous 24-hour period had been the busiest for storm damage response in the past two decades. She added that callouts often continued on the day after a severe weather event, even after conditions had stabilised.

The person who died was fishing when the accident occurred. Some trains were also expected to run late on Sunday.