Storm clear-up begins

Published 4 Jan 2012 09:30

THE clean-up operation is underway across Dumbarton and the Vale today (Wednesday) after the area was lashed by 80mph winds.

West Dunbartonshire Council (WDC) says its staff are busy dealing with hundreds of incidents following yesterday's storm.

Teams were called to respond to a wide range of incidents such as damaged properties, fallen trees, flooding and general service disruption.

At present, WDC says it is tackling those situations that present an immediate danger to the public, threaten to close the road network or where major damage has been caused such as a roof being blown off.

Amongst the damage caused yesterday:

Building control officers responded to 19 incidents of major damage including Cumbrae Crescent South in Castlehill, Dumbarton, Milton Estatei in Jamestown, Alexandria, and Scott Avenue in Bowling.

A number of residents needed to be evacuated with some needing to be temporarily housed by the Council.

Our Lady of St Patrick's High School, Dalreoch Primary, Whitecrook Primary and Braehead Primary all suffered roof damage. Dumbarton Academy's gym roof has been removed, and there is damage to the gym hall roof at Kilpatrick School. At this point the Council intends to open all its schools on Monday as normal but any change to this, following further assessments, will be communicated before the weekend.

The Meadow Centre had several cladding strips blown from the roof, but remains open with affected areas cordoned off to the public.

An estimated 1,000 trees have been felled

Greenspace teams were out from 7.30am yesterday clearing debris and working with staff from roads to clear carriageways. Chainsaw operatives were out from 8am until 1am clearing obstructions on the roads and dealing with emergency situations.

Despite the challenging conditions social work still managed to deliver 1,604 home care visits to more than 1,000 clients yesterday.

Waste collections continued as normal yesterday, and those few areas that could not be reached will be collected by the end of this week.

More than 1,300 enquiries have been made to the contact centre and WDC has answered 800.

Staff are doing their best to answer all enquiries but the sheer volume is making that difficult and we ask that residents bear with us at this point and the average wait is three minutes.

Joyce White, WDC chief executive, said: "Tuesday's storm is probably the worst that we have seen in this area for 10 years and it has caused widespread damage to tenant and resident properties as well as council buildings. Due to the scale of damage the clear-up operation will take some time to complete and we would ask our residents to bear with us as much as possible.

"I would like to apologise to any residents who found it difficult to contact the Council yesterday. The fact the storm hit on a Bank Holiday meant there were fewer Council staff on duty than normal and they faced a volume of calls that was far in excess of what would normally be handled on a typical working day. We're doing our best to clear up any backlog as quickly as we can."

"I'd also like to thank those staff that worked exceptionally hard and for long hours yesterday to try to minimise the disruption that was faced. This included many staff who came in to work on their days off to help the Council provide essential services to our residents."

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