Tens of thousands of homes have been left without power as Storm Eunice hits Wales.
On Friday afternoon, Western Power Distribution (WPD) has reported widespread outages in power with the company saying 41,520 in Wales had no power at 2pm, while there were almost 95,000 homes in the south west of England without power at that stage.
By 5pm, some 37,419 homes in Wales still had no power though WPD said they had in total restored power to more than 70,525 customers in the region.
As of 9pm, 27,131 Welsh homes are still without power. Across the company's network - which also covers the Midlands and the south west of England - there are still over 100,000 homes that have no power.
Get all the latest on the storm in our rolling live coverage here.
On Friday night, a spokesperson for the company said: "As the winds from Storm Eunice start to subside, our teams continue to work hard in challenging conditions to restore power supplies and support customers, and will continue to do so throughout the weekend.
"So far, we have been able to restore 393,000 properties, however there are currently 112,000 without power. Throughout the day we have had over 100 staff available to respond to customer calls quickly, while the Red Cross has been providing welfare support.
"Today has brought ferocious wind speeds for the south of the UK, with almost 90mph gales severely impacting parts of our region, particularly south west England and South Wales.
"Because of the devastating nature of the storm, repair and restoration work is being hampered by difficulties in accessing faults, while we’re also uncovering the extent of the damage to overhead lines and poles when we do find the problem. This requires time, dedication and skill from our engineers to rectify, in some of the most difficult conditions in recent time.
"Strong winds can result in debris blowing into overhead power lines and damaging poles and equipment. It can also restrict access to getting to incidents where roads are blocked because of flooding or trees in the road."
Graham Halladay, Operations Director, added: “I would first like to say how much I appreciate the resilience and support shown by our customers at this challenging time. We are now moving resources from the least affected areas to support customers that remain without power to speed up our efforts, and you can be rest assured that we will be working late tonight and early tomorrow to get the lights back on for homes and businesses.
“I’d also like to thank our staff for their continued hard work to restore power in horrendous conditions and support customers.
“If you spot damage to our equipment or spot electricity poles or power lines that are down, please stay clear of them and call 105 immediately.”
“Please also contact us should you require further information about your power cut. Our Contact Centre staff are on hand 24/7 to help. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
On Friday, hundreds of homes and businesses were affected in St Clears, Carmarthenshire, while there was major disruption to supplies in the Port Talbot area with around 1,500 homes without power.
In St Clears an estimated 378 properties were left without power in the area from shortly before 8am on Friday.
Elsewhere 146 homes near Abertillery were left without power on Friday morning while almost 50 properties in the Bettws area of Newport were affected. A further 115 properties in the Port Talbot area were warned not to expect to have their power restored until noon on Friday at the earliest while a small number of homes were affected by an outage in the Southgate area of Gower.
In the Llanelli area at least 279 properties were affected while there was also disruption in Lampeter and at Knighton in Powys on Friday morning.
As the high winds worsened 150 properties in the Cowbridge area were left without power while more than 1,000 homes lost power in the SA6 area of Swansea. Hundreds more lost power near Glynneath.
It came as parts of Wales have been placed under a "rare" red alert as Storm Eunice hits the country. The serious alert was in place between 7am and 12pm on Friday, February 18, with further alerts in place after that.
Most schools in Wales were shut while many areas were at risk of flooding.
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