Storm Éowyn labelled a 'hurricane' as NIE reports that Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough was one of the worst-affected areas of the province

By Francois Vincent, Local Democracy Reporter
Published 10th May 2025, 06:00 BST

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While a third of NIE customers were without power in Northern Ireland in the wake of Storm Éowyn, the situation was even worse in the Craigavon area, with a massive 40 per cent of customers initially affected

That was one of the facts outlined at last Thursday’s (May 1) special ABC Council meeting by Rodney Ballentine, NIE Networks Local Incidents Centre (LIC) manager for Craigavon, who had led restoration efforts in the ABC area.

The NIE Networks official started by showing some drone footage giving a measure of the sheer devastation experienced at Gosford Forest Park, where trees were extensively damaged in addition to overhead lines.

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The centre manager stated: “As you can see the forest park is completely devastated. We are actively working with the Forestry department, to understand what can be done to minimise the impact of the trees on our network, because it was a hurricane that caused complete devastation to the forest park.

Falling trees often take electricity poles and wires with them (stock image). Picture: Stephen Hamilton / Press EyeFalling trees often take electricity poles and wires with them (stock image). Picture: Stephen Hamilton / Press Eye
Falling trees often take electricity poles and wires with them (stock image). Picture: Stephen Hamilton / Press Eye

“We brought in six helicopters with trained observers and they have access to our network maps. So when they see damage to our network or trees they can send that in to us (…) to speed up the restoration activities.

“To restore the supply to one customer, because of the level of damage in the trees and the conductors that were wrapped in and around those trees, we had to use a crane to lift a digger into a customer’s garden.

“That one fault took eight men 12 hours to restore that one customer, plus a crane and a track digger. When we’re down to individual one-offs, it’s just trying to show you the level of intensive labour that it takes to get one customer back on.

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“LICs (Local Incident Centres) kick into place whenever we have a storm escalation. Craigavon LIC, my patch, was getting the worst of the storm at 7am. We were getting gusts of 87mph across the high ground around Keady/Derrynoose direction.

This chart shows how quickly customers lost power in the Craigavon Local Incident Centre catchment area, going from zero customer to nearly 20,000 within 12 hours on January 24. Credit: NIE NetworksThis chart shows how quickly customers lost power in the Craigavon Local Incident Centre catchment area, going from zero customer to nearly 20,000 within 12 hours on January 24. Credit: NIE Networks
This chart shows how quickly customers lost power in the Craigavon Local Incident Centre catchment area, going from zero customer to nearly 20,000 within 12 hours on January 24. Credit: NIE Networks

Normal Day

“We had 351 faults in total due to the storm and 115 HV (high voltage) faults. Just to put that into perspective, on a normal day across all of Northern Ireland, on average we get six HV faults per day.

“We managed to get 57 per cent of our customers back on within 24 hours. Fault restoration activity started straight after the red warning period ended.

“So we were getting guys out in the ground from 3pm, but those activities on the Friday afternoon were basically making things safe, taking conductors, isolating conductors and getting them off the road, helping to get trees off roads so that the traffic could flow, and real restoration repairs didn’t actively start until the Saturday.

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“On the Friday night we got faulted sections isolated and restored customers, but repairs didn’t start until daylight on Saturday.

“We had 35,000 customers within our Craigavon patch affected. We have 87,000 customers within Craigavon LIC’s operational area, so about 40% of them were affected due to the storm.

“At 00 hours on Friday, January 24, we had basically nobody off as it was very calm, and then the storm came in and our first customer within Craigavon went off supply at about 1.30am.

“And by 1pm on Friday we were up to just under 20,000 customers off supply. And then, as we started to go out onto the ground and started to isolate the faults, we were able to restore the non-faulty sections of each of those circuits and we started to get customers back on supply.

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“And by about 10pm on the Friday night, we were down to 14,000 customers still off supply.

Every Night

“That 14,000 [still] off, that was because of the damage. We knew we were into a multi-day event, so our aim that night and every other night was to try and get our operational staff home and off the network at approximately 10pm at night, to get them back in again for 7am in the morning, to get them back out again for 8am at daylight.

“We had our last customer back on supply in Craigavon LIC on Monday, February 3.”

Customer & Markets Services director at NIE Networks, Adele Creery explained that a ‘post-storm review’ is currently underway, and she indicated that any feedback from ABC councillors would be welcome as part of that review process.