Moravia-Silesia hit hardest as storms cut power to thousands

Prague, Sept 15 (CTK) - Around 260,000 households were without power at 7:00 a.m. due to bad weather in the Czech Republic and the situation is worst in the Moravia-Silesia Region, where 114,000 customers have no electricity, spokespersons for CEZ and E.ON told journalists today.

There are 34,000 households without power in the Olomouc Region, 30,000 in South Moravia, 25,000 in the Hradec Kralove Region and 16,000 in the Liberec Region.

CEZ Distribuce records 240 faults on high voltage lines and hundreds on low voltage lines in its distribution territory. The main cause is fallen trees and branches on the lines due to strong winds. They also uprooted several poles with lines. A large-scale outage was caused by flooding of a substation in Krnov. E.ON reports 91 faults on high voltage lines in the south of the Czech Republic.

According to CEZ spokeswoman Sonia Holingerova, the largest number of customers without electricity is in the districts of Novy Jicin, 26,000, Bruntal, 25,000 households, Trutnov, 13,000, and Ostrava and Jesenik. "Our crews have been in the terrain all night, but the repairs are complicated by strong winds," Holinger said.

According to E.ON spokesman Roman Spernak, the faults began to increase on Saturday afternoon and in the early evening and did not stop overnight and continue to increase. These are mainly the consequences of waterlogged terrain and strong winds, which subsequently uproot trees and damage the distribution equipment. "At the same time, we also had to resort to shutting down the substation units of the stations in the early evening yesterday due to the threat of rising river levels. Especially in the south of Bohemia," Spernak added.

On Saturday evening, CEZ declared a state of calamity in some parts of six regions, which means a large accumulation of faults that will require a longer time to repair.

pvr/dr