Storm leaves 183,000 Lithuanians without power
Sunday 23rd August 2026 on 14:45 in
Lithuania
A storm has left 183,000 people in Lithuania without electricity, and restoring the network could take up to a week, LRT reported, citing the electricity distribution operator ESO.
One person was killed and three were injured in the storm. Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said the situation remained tense, particularly because of the disruption to electricity supplies.
“We have to deal with the consequences of the storm as quickly as possible, without counting the time, human resources or potential financial costs,” Sinkevičius told reporters after an interinstitutional meeting on Sunday morning.
The government does not plan to declare a nationwide emergency. Representatives of the institutions involved also said that military assistance was not currently needed.
ESO chief Renaldas Radvila said the greatest damage to the electricity network had been recorded in the Kaunas region. More than 1,000 people were involved in restoring services, and more than 100 generators were delivered to municipalities on Sunday.
Radvila said the highest number of outages was recorded on Saturday evening, when 268,000 people were without electricity. ESO representative Rasa Juodkienė earlier told LRT radio that restoration work was expected to take about a week.
The Emergency Response Centre received more than 24,000 calls, with the call rate reaching 14 per second at its peak, according to Saulius Tamulevičius, deputy head of the Fire and Rescue Department.
Firefighters and rescue workers received more than 1,800 reports of fallen trees and branches from Saturday to Sunday morning. They removed trees and branches blocking roads, damaging cars and buildings, and falling onto electricity infrastructure.
Kaunas County recorded the most reports, with 465 in 24 hours. Vilnius County recorded 237, Utena County 217, Alytus County 191, Panevėžys County 151, Šiauliai County 145, Klaipėda County 123, Marijampolė County 117, Tauragė County 96 and Telšiai County 59.
Firefighters received 70 additional reports of fallen trees and branches between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Sunday. Delays to some trains were also expected.