A total of 33,000 homes remain without power this afternoon across County Donegal.
The areas with the biggest outages remaining include Buncrana, where 7,000 homes are without power, Carndonagh with 3,000 people affected, Milford and Donegal Town with 2,500 outages each, and Killybegs with 2,300 people without electricity there.
The ESB say that all of their crews in Letterkenny and Killybegs have been deployed to help restore power, as well as the company’s contracting partners.
So far approximately 53,000 homes have been reconnected in Donegal according to ESB figures, but there may be a long wait in store for some to be reconnected.
The ESB has issued a stark warning that power may not be restored in some parts of the county for up to a week.
It’s understood that there is a shortage of some of crucial materials such as transformers and poles due to the vast scale of devastation nationwide.
Latest figures show that 330,000 homes nationwide are still without power, and the ESB estimates that up to 100,000 homes may still be without power until Friday the 31st of January.
“We anticipate that the vast majority of customers who lost power during Storm Éowyn will have supply restored by Friday night, 31st January,” the ESB said in a statement.
“For the remaining customers, these will progressively have power restored over the course of the following week. This could be as many as 100,000 customers.”
“Crews have continued to work in difficult conditions through Storm Herminia today: while this storm hasn’t caused significant damage to the network, it is hampering power restoration efforts in places. Power restoration efforts will remain dynamic and weather conditions may impact on the restoration work.”
“We are engaged with utilities across Europe and we expect support to arrive from the GB in coming days. In addition, ESB Networks crews from the south of the country and Dublin are being deployed across worse impacted areas, while skilled retirees from ESB Networks are also being redrafted to help.”
Anyone who is seeking updates has been asked to sign up to the ESB’s “Keep Me Notified” service, via their PowerCheck.ie website.
“We advise customers to sign up for our “Keep me Notified” service for power outages on www.PowerCheck.ie to
receive status updates directly. To sign up please enter your Eircode and the mobile number associated with your account.”
“We have also been made aware of scam text messages purporting to come from ESB Networks. We ask that customers do not engage directly, do not share any personal information if asked, and block and report the suspicious number if necessary.”
