East Lothian Council fear fatalities over power cut threat
Bosses have bought satellite internet dishes from Elon Musk
Emergency plans to deal with a nationwide powercut are being drawn up by East Lothian Council amid warnings it could lead to deaths in the county.
A meeting of elected members was today told that work was already underway to prepare for a national blackout with generators able to provide eight days of energy for essential services.
And it was revealed the council has bought two satellite dishes from Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm to provide back up internet connection in the event of losing connection which have already been used.
Councillors were told that a National Power Outage had been added to its Corporate Risk Register, which looks at potential dangers facing the local authority and rates the possibility of it happening, for the first time.
A report to members said the National Electricity Transmission System (NETS) transports electricity across Great Britain.
It said: “Total failure of this system would cause a nationwide loss of electricity supplies instantaneously and without warning. This would cause cascading failures across multiple sectors including telecoms, water, gas, sewage, food, health and fuel, and cause significant disruption to public service provision and most businesses and households.
Disruptions could lead to fatalities
“These disruptions could lead to physical and psychological casualties or fatalities due to the loss of the services relied upon by many, especially those with health and wellbeing vulnerabilities.
“The council must be prepared, as best we can, to respond and recover should widespread electricity failure ever occur.
“Communications will be seriously interrupted, the care of vulnerable people will become hugely challenging and the continued provision of our critical activities, will be seriously tested.”
Scott Kennedy, the council’s head of emergency planning, told members the chance of such a catastrophic event were low.
He said: “While the likelihood of such a risk is low the impact would be major.
“East Lothian Council’s planned responses will be further refined following receipt of anticipated national guidance as both UK and Scottish Government are working on their own Frameworks with Scottish Government developing a Power Resilience Multi-Agency Response Framework for Scotland.”
Councillors were told back up generators and airwave radio terminals were already in place with a local plans being drawn up for the county.
Satellite internet constellation
Councillor Lachlan Bruce asked about the costs involved revealing the council had bought units which allow it to link to Starlink , a satellite internet constellation operated by American aerospace company SpaceX.
He was told that it was not expensive and the council had now bought two units for under £5000 – and already used one, which was deployed to Knox Academy, in Haddington, to help with IT issues.
A council spokesperson said: “The council’s IT were able to “borrow” the system to provide network connectivity to Knox Academy a couple of weeks ago when the underground fibre optic cable to the school was damaged.
“This will continue to be used until the cable are replaced in the New Year.
“Given how easy it was to install and how inexpensive it is to run, the council’s IT dept have since purchased a further system to use as a contingency if we lose connection to a site for a period of time similar as to what has happened at Knox.”