News / Recovering from the storm
A SHETLAND media business is getting back on its feet after last week’s lightning strikes threatened to derail a documentary being prepared for next month’s Shetland film festival.
Ronas Media, based in Sweening, near Vidlin, was one of many buildings that lost power and communications after the storm on Friday night last week.
The power took 30 hours to come back on and the phone lines are not expected to be operational before Monday, 10 days after lightning struck.
Owner Simon Thompson was keen to ensure he protected his expensive production equipment, especially as he is six weeks away from delivering a movie about last year’s Shetland Arts Hansel of Film project for the Cultural Olympiad.
“I was feeling very pleased with myself because I have an uninterruptable power supply to keep things going when there are power cuts and I have surge protectors to stop spikes coming down the mains,” he said.
“On Friday as an extra precaution I had switched everything off, but I forgot to disconnect the router from the phone line and I assume there was a surge down the line – certainly all my phones have been fried.”
Unfortunately the router was also connected by an ethernet cable to his computers, so the power surge also destroyed his motherboard and hard drive.
The damage could have easily threatened his chances of completing his documentary of the Hansel of Film adventure that saw hundreds of small, independent films from Shetland and elsewhere being shown in 23 venues across the country during the Olympic summer of 2012.
Being “massively pedantic” about backing things up, he had gigabyte upon gigabyte of footage stored elsewhere on a range of hard drives.
But he was faced with the painstaking task of retrieving all the footage and other data using his laptop, while his main computer is being repaired by Apple.
“It could have been a big problem because we are just six weeks away from the premier of the 90 minute documentary at the Screenplay festival,” he said.
“It took 36 hours to get everything up and running again and I am having to work on a slightly limited system, but if it had been 48 hours from the premier it would have been a real difficulty.”
Become a member of Shetland News
Shetland News is asking its many readers to consider paying for membership to get additional features and services: -
- Remove non-local ads;
- Bookmark posts to read later;
- Exclusive curated weekly newsletter;
- Hide membership messages;
- Comments open for discussion.
If you appreciate what we do and feel strongly about impartial local journalism, then please become a member of Shetland News by either making a single payment, or setting up a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.
Already a member? Sign in to hide this message.
