Storm leaves 11,000 Latvian households without power

Four days after a destructive storm hit Latvia, around 11,000 households remained without electricity on Wednesday morning, LSM reported. The electricity distribution company Sadales tīkls said it planned to restore power to all affected customers by Friday.

Most of the remaining outages were in the Aizkraukle, Preiļi, Jēkabpils and Rēzekne municipalities. Large numbers of workers were involved in repairing the damage.

In some villages, neighbours have been working together to deal with the storm’s aftermath. The storm also created difficulties for the State Border Guard.

Power and communications outages disrupted communication between residents and affected the work of emergency services. The Ministry of Transport now wants to set minimum resilience requirements for mobile network operators to improve access to communications during crises. One proposal would allow people to use another operator’s network during an emergency.

State forests are continuing to assess the damage, which has so far been estimated at approximately 200,000 cubic metres.

The storm was also discussed at the weekly meeting between the president and prime minister. The prime minister criticised cooperation between public services, while the president said the creation of the Crisis Management Centre had stalled halfway. Both called for Ukraine’s experience in managing crises to be examined.

Authorities are preparing proposals to improve crisis response. Generators may provide a solution during power cuts, but shops have reportedly run out of them. Lithuania is also continuing to deal with the storm’s consequences.