Storm leaves thousands without power across Latgale
Tuesday 25th August 2026 on 08:45 in
Latvia
More than 90% of customers affected by the weekend storm in Latvia have regained electricity, but some residents in several Latgale municipalities had been without power for more than 50 hours on Tuesday morning, LSM reported.
The crisis has lasted longest in remote rural areas, where power cuts have also disrupted communications, water supplies, sewage systems, shops and access to fuel.
In Krāslava Municipality, electricity was still unavailable across roughly a quarter of the territory, including parts of the Izvalta, Šķeltova, Grāveri, Kastuiņa, Andrupene, Andzeļi and Ezernieki rural parishes. Mobile communications had also not been restored in many places.
Local authorities said they lacked fuel, water tanks and generators in some areas. Disruptions to electricity, communications, water supplies and shop operations were reported in the municipality.
About 3,000 households remained without electricity in Rēzekne Municipality. Augšdaugava Municipality recorded around 200 outages, mainly at remote isolated homesteads.
Electricity had been restored in the town of Ludza and most of Ludza Municipality, with only individual homesteads still affected. The storm also damaged the open-air stage in Kārsava, Ludza Park and cemeteries.
Power supply had been restored across almost all of Jēkabpils Municipality, although generators were still being used in some locations. Electricity had also returned to Preiļi and most of Preiļi Municipality, while crews continued repairing smaller power-line faults in four or five rural parishes.
Sadales tīkls reported that about 31,000 customers across Latvia were still without electricity on Tuesday morning. By then, the company had repaired 700 distribution-grid faults, with more than 200 crews involved. Drones were being used to inspect damaged lines.
The restoration rate indicates that major network hubs and more densely populated areas are recovering faster, while locating and repairing faults at network endpoints and dispersed homesteads is taking longer. Sadales tīkls updates its digital outage map every 15 minutes.