“Unfortunately, the situation in the country is still tense. Unfortunately, we also have one fatality, and we want to express our condolences to his family and relatives. We also have three injured persons. The situation with electricity supply is especially complicated at the moment,” the Prime Minister told journalists on Sunday.
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“Our priority is to restore electricity supply to consumers as quickly as possible. This is priority number one,” he assured.
Thus, the Prime Minister spoke after an inter-institutional meeting on eliminating the consequences of the storm.
“My main message to all institutions was that we must deal with the consequences of the storm as quickly as possible, regardless of time, human resources, or possible financial costs,” emphasized M. Sinkevičius.
According to the Prime Minister, the extent of the damage in financial terms has not yet been calculated, but it “will undoubtedly be large.”
220 thousand people without electricity
The head of the “Energy Distribution Operator” (ESO), Renaldas Radvila, assured that currently about 220 thousand residents are without electricity. According to him, the Kaunas, Utena, Panevėžys, and Vilnius regions are most affected by disruptions.
“Today we expect to have a preliminary assessment of how long the entire network restoration might take (…). Overall, we have over 1,000 people involved in eliminating the disruptions across the organization,” he said.
ESO representative Rasa Juodkienė told LRT radio earlier that restoration work is planned to take about a week.
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R. Radvila noted that the maximum number of disruptions was recorded on Saturday evening, when 268 thousand residents of the country were without electricity. He also indicated that more than 100 generators reached municipalities on Sunday.
According to the Deputy Director of the Fire Protection and Rescue Department (PAGD), Saulius Tamulevičius, the General Help Center received over 24 thousand calls.
“At peak times, we received 14 calls per second. We want to be glad that our system withstood that call flow at peak times. The vast majority of calls were indeed answered,” he assured.
According to PAGD data, most reports concern trees fallen on the roadway. The highest number of calls was in the Kaunas county, where firefighters rushed to help nearly 500 times.
No plans to declare a state of emergency
According to the Prime Minister, there are no plans to declare a state of emergency nationwide.
The Prime Minister also said that representatives of institutions participating in the meeting indicated that military assistance is not currently needed in eliminating the consequences.
“In response to the open question of whether it would be necessary to involve riflemen, National Defence Volunteer Forces, or others, the heads of institutions said that so far the situation is under control. (…) for now, there is no need to declare a state of emergency nationwide,” he emphasized.
As BNS wrote, in the Anykščiai district on Saturday evening, a fallen tree fatally injured a man. According to PAGD data, he was fishing, and as the tree fell, it submerged him in a body of water.
Due to the consequences of the storm, some trains may be delayed by up to an hour.
According to meteorologists, Saturday’s storm was the strongest recorded storm this summer.
