Storm Arwen: Surviving seven days of winter without electricity

A week on from Storm Arwen thousands of people in north east Scotland, the south of Scotland and the north of England are still without power.

In Scotland, about 120 military personnel have been drafted in to help, focusing on welfare checks in the communities still badly affected. The Bellwin Scheme has now been activated, giving local councils financial from the Scottish government to deal with emergency incidents.

In England, a major incident has been declared in County Durham while some households have been moved into temporary accommodation.

Here are the stories of some of those affected by the power cuts.

Linda Dunk made a casserole just before Storm Arwen hit - and since then it has provided her and her husband with a daily hot meal on their camping stove.

Mrs Dunk, 72, and her 75-year-old husband Paul live in a converted mill outside Torphins in Aberdeenshire, which was one of the areas worst hit last Friday.

They have been without power since then, and have relied on a wood burner for heat - alongside five layers of clothes - and a head torch to see in the dark.

An old telephone has been their means of communication to try to find updates about possible reconnection.

"Cold becomes very exhausting", Mrs Dunk said. "We are both in our 70s, you start to ache more - this building is getting colder and colder. We are carrying heavy buckets of water in the snow. And it's very boring, just medieval - how our ancestors lived thousands of years ago.

"Last Friday lunchtime I made a beef casserole and then the storm came. We have lived on that - one decent hot meal every day, with rice, and cabbage from the garden.

"I think the most distressing thing is that you think you might get power back on, then you are off another 24 hours, and your optimism drops."

She added: "I want to stress we really appreciate the efforts of the community, and the engineers out there in this weather."

Dr Lily Fulton-Humble, who lives near Alnwick in Northumberland, said the past week had been "difficult".

She has a seven-week old baby and a toddler. Her parents drove down from Scotland on Sunday to pick up her eldest child as she was unwell.

"It's pretty cold and, when you're feeding a baby every two hours, it's even colder," she said.

"It's been difficult and I think we're losing the stamina and perhaps, if we had known in advance, that it would be so long, we may have acted differently."

Artist Meg Scarborough runs a cattery in Foulden in the Scottish Borders which went five nights without electricity.

"We had nine cats in during the storm, luckily the cattery itself is extremely protected so the cats didn't seem to be too bothered," she said. We were having to fill up hot water bottles to put in cat beds as that was the only way to keep them warm."

She said her village felt "forgotten about" but had rallied round to help with a nearby community larder staying open late to offer hot drinks and charging points.

"Scottish Power would send us updates every day saying we should expect power back in our homes by 16:00, then pushed back to 22:00 and every day we waited and it never happened," she said.

"It made us feel very helpless, especially as a lot of the people in the village are elderly or disabled."

She said that it was particularly difficult to look after one pet in her care.

"Scottish Power was offering hotels for some vulnerable people but what could we do when we run a cattery":[]}