News / Storm causes schools to shut early
WITH winds in Shetland forecast to touch storm force again on Monday afternoon, school bairns are being sent home at lunchtime.
Shetland Islands Council said Baltasound and Sandwick junior highs would be closing at 12.30pm, with pupils travelling by bus due to be collected at 1.30pm.
Cunningsburgh primary school closed at noon and Dunrossness primary said it would shut at 1.30pm. Ollaberry and Skeld primaries will both shut at 1pm.
Whalsay School will also be closing at 1.30pm, and Skerries didn’t open at all on Monday.
There are also further disruptions to inter island ferries and the bus service.
Serco NorthLink has cancelled its passenger ferries for Monday night, while Tuesday’s overnight service is currently under review.
One flight from Edinburgh was able to land at Sumburgh Airport shortly after 11am, but many others have been cancelled.
On Sunday night lightning caused renewed power cuts and further damage to the telecommunications network across the islands.
Three hundred customers were still without power on the West Side by late on Monday morning. Around 2,000 customers in the north of the islands lost power for up to four anda a half hours on Sunday night.
Ian Brown of Shetland Broadband said the last few days had been extremely challenging.
“Currently, we have network faults at Sumburgh and West Burrafirth and a small number of individual customer premises faults,” he said.
“Due to the high winds today (Monday), it will likely be Tuesday before we can make progress on fixing those.”
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is urging householders to be extra careful when using candles during power cuts.
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