Not anyone’s fault, but whose responsibility?

[vanjan25]

The weather to cripple Kintyre, Islay and Arran over the weekend became noticeably poor on Thursday evening, and by Friday easterly winds were battering Campbeltown Loch and the town situated around it with amazing ferocity. Winds of 60-70 miles per hour, combined with snowfall, created a vast drift in North Kintyre, at Clachan, rendering the road impassable. Thousands of homes across the peninsula, at the time of writing, have been deprived of electricity and many basic commodities that come with that supply.

Sitting in work on Friday morning the lights flickered repeatedly, before the radio lost signal around lunchtime and the power cut out completely at around 2pm. It would have been the same for many Campbeltown business in that they would have literally had to ‘shut up shop’ and hope for normality by Monday. Indeed, numerous locations outside Campbeltown had been shorn of power since Thursday night or Friday morning.

On Saturday morning, the storm still raging, there was little accessible information and people, predictably, were operating by hear-say. It is unwise, when not having a clear picture of the implications of the storm, neither of its severity in cutting off roads and electricity pylons nor of the duration of the disruption, to simply begin saying things inanely. It creates nothing more than a general confusion which is actually quite demoralising.

Further knee-jerk reactions caused by planning on nothing but assumption, is the certain panic, and even greed, prompted by the lack of commodities in the area.

The A83 road was closed at Clachan, a snowdrift of 15ft becoming the obvious cause of the lack of supplies in Campbeltown by the weekend, and the combination of no electricity and little remaining supplies meant that by the time some power was restored, albeit by means of fuel-powered generators transported into the town by sea, there existed, by Sunday, a situation where people felt the need to panic-buy. The supermarkets, as if I need to note, were gutted of their alimentary content.

While it cannot be ignored that shopkeepers such as McIlchere’s, who did some fantastic work over the weekend, opening out-of-hours and providing hot and cold food for people in need of it at reasonable prices, some other instances of outlets opening-up prompted panic-buying (the half-mile queue for petrol from the County Garage, run by ESSO/Highland Fuels, created by those whose vehicular mobility in many cases was not exactly vital - i.e living in town and able to walk - is one such example). As our culture of consumption seems to demand, people are conditioned to think on a quotidian basis so even in temporarily hard times they will behave as if still in the day-to-day routine. During a shortage of fuel and other provisions such as this one, people need to react in sensible terms, rather than through what is essentially selfish stockpiling.

That said, the lack of information, and even more importantly the lack of an obvious information centre, making possible these rumours that create panicky mentality among people, is slightly alarming. Kintyre is as isolated and sparsely populated a mainland location as you will find in Scotland, and this shortage has underlined this isolation. Who has the ultimate authority for dealing with such future crises? And with the disadvantageous combination of wind and snow crippling the area, will there be a future centre to gather the latest information so as to keep people better informed? The rumour-cum-information being feed to people is simply not enough.

I am not, for the record, saying that the local authorities are not trying, of course they are, and in addition to that it has been said by many within the community that Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) are working relentlessly, day and night, to repair power lines ravaged across the Kintyre Peninsula.

Traffic Scotland today announced a closure of the A83 from its current state of policed convoy, an entirely incorrect one, which it then had to retract. Argyll & Bute Council has a Facebook page dedicated to ‘weathering the storm’. While the local council indulges in the creation of an internet site with generic, sporadic news showing ploughs clearing snow, does it believe the thousands of homes without power will be able to see the work being done, or access any of the information posted on the page? It is a little piecemeal. Furthermore, are elderly citizens of Kintyre, who perhaps without family and even more likely without an understanding of this means of technology and with no other means to communicate, reliant simply on being found before it is too late?

In some instances, the response to what is a veritable crisis for people without the means to heat and feed themselves has been epic, from the scores of NHS health workers and associated volunteers out in the mercilessly cold weather on Sunday 24th, to the friendliness of the mobile catering unit staff who had to patiently wait in Tarbert since Friday evening to come to our aid, waiting open for nurses and others as late as 3am on the morning of Monday 25th. The genuine concern I hold is that, indirectly, there are people who could even die as a result of a dearth of information, a dearth becoming clear during this blizzard in Kintyre.

For future shortages, of which there will be some due to the increasingly unpredictable and unseasonal nature of our weather, I believe information points should be set up, with Campbeltown as a Kintyre hub, telephone lines to appointed people within smaller communities, and with telephone links from a central information point to the emergency services, RNLI, electricity and water boards. Secondly, to prepare sensibly and on time, more heed of the weather and of Met Office reports could be taken in order to inform anyone, vulnerable or not, of impending bad weather.

Eventually the area will recover, thanks to a huge collective effort already witnessed around Kintyre, but in future it would be for the best if this remote pocket of Scotland was not left feeling even more alone by inadequate preparation of provisions, and a lack of cohesive response. For now it is imperative that those who continue to be vulnerable and alone are made to feel that bit safer, warmer and more comfortable.

[MurkyLitFelon]

Day Five.

Communication links have always been bad here, but the Vodafone network has been down since Friday morning in Campbeltown and EE went down within FIVE MINUTES of the lights going out. This is crazy.

Even the electricity workers can't communicate back to base, so teams aren't co-ordinated and supplies aren't ordered in a timely fashion.

We've been relying on Inmarsat which has been absolutely rock solid - but for everyone else with no landline, heat, light, water, gas, something as simple as a Campbeltown based radio station giving out reliable information to the whole of Kintyre would help. Surely just an emergency AM transmitter, a generator and a supply contract with McNairs for red-diesel is all that's needed?

That way, anyone with a old battery radio and a spare set of batteries would always be kept informed, even in the worst of conditions, anywhere in Kintyre, even if completely snowed-in.

Knowledge is power, and knowing that it's still not safe to venture out on the Bxxx when there are no supplies of campingaz in the town anyway could be the difference between life and death.

[Niander]

Very interesting thanks for the info
ive just left Kintyre to pastures new [because the tower factory was so pathetic to not even give me an interview for a job...a bit strange as im a skilled plater/welder!]...but that's another story.
I only left 1 month ago so I was wondering what the situation is in my old town
so thanks for keeping us informed..i notice the news seems obsessed with Arron not hardly mentioning poor Campbeltown!

[Niander]

Excellent post Vanjan ...just read it all ...you talk sense.