'Unbearable situation': Tens of thousands in Northern Ireland endure a fifth day without power due to Storm Eowyn

In all, 10 primary schools were still closed today – mainly in counties Londonderry, Down, and Fermanagh – plus Killicomaine Junior High School in Portadown.

Almost all were closed because of a lack of electricity.

NI Electricity (NIE) supplies power to roughly 910,000 customers (meaning individual homes and businesses).

At the peak after the storm about 283,000 – or roughly 31% – were left without power.

By Monday evening, the figure stood at 56,000 customers out of power, or 6.2%.

And as of Tuesday evening, the figure stood at 37,000, or 4.1%.

Meanwhile about 300 properties were without water.

The communities minister Gordon Lyons today announced £1m in funding for things like “community assistance centres, emergency supplies of hot meals, transport to and from centres and other services, and washing facilities”.

Meanwhile NIE said that, as well as having over 1,000 NI staff “working around the clock”, nearly 200 extra staff had been brought in to the Province to help, plus “helicopters, drones, generators and replacement parts from stockpiles in other parts of the UK” – and that “more people and equipment expected to be sent” later this week.

One of those still going without electricity as of late Tuesday afternoon was a 56-year-old arthritis sufferer from the Comber area (the News Letter knows his identity, but is witholding it).

"It is a disaster they're dealing with, but at the same time I'm getting conflicting stories from them," said the man of NIE.

"I'm getting text messages now. One minute the alerts are telling you: it'll be the 30th at 22.00 it'll be restored. Then it's back to February 2 and February 3. Then the text messages are jumping back to the 30th."

Meanwhile his house, which lacks insulation, is "like an icebox".

"I've no cooking facilities, but the main thing is the heat. Saturday night into Sunday, it was frosty, minus 1C in the morning time. I could breathe and see the air coming out of my mouth in my bedroom.

"No electric blanket, nothing. I was burning tealights and candles to try and keep a bit of heat in the bedroom. My arthritis is flaring up – I've got it in my spine and shoulders…

"With the arthritis and the cold it's just unbearable to sleep at night."

He questioned why the additional engineers who have been dispatched to Northern Ireland from GB to help with repairs weren't dispatched earlier.

"Our country doesn't seem to be run right, as in preparations for everything. They were given advance notice of this, like.

"If they hadn't enough men, they should've been trying to get extra men."

He had portable powerbanks charged up before the storm which he has been using to charge his phone, and he has been eating either cereal or takeaways.

He has now agreed to stay with a friend until the electricity comes back on.

"I've just decided I can't cope any longer," he said.

Elsewhere in the constituency, Naomi Armstrong-Cotter, a DUP councillor, has voiced fears for motorists' safety.

She said the Mt Stewart Road at the top of the Ards peninsula has fallen trees along it for about a kilometer, and that people are not heeding the diversion signs in the area.

"There's still a threat there," she said.

"The difficulty is we're going to have a serious injury; there's four or five cars trying to manuever around fallen trees, and there's others still to fall."

Meanwhile in Upper Bann, Carla Lockhart said that there remain "thousands" in her constituency without power, but "we can't praise NIE engineers enough for their efforts – everyone's shoulder is to the wheel".

She added that "so many families have lost freezers full of food", and she added her voice to the call for some kind of hardship payment to be issued to those affected.

Could NIE have planned better?

"I suppose in all of these things there'll be reflections as to what the response time was. But with that number of outages, it's difficult to plan for that, and with the sheer damage that'd been done on certain lines. It's difficult to plan for something of that magnitude."

Among the many people posting on her constituency Facebook page was Jane Miltiadous from the Portsdown area.

"This is just awful, we’ve been off for five days!” she said.

"No heating, no way to cook! Three older kids to feed – I don’t think I can cope ‘til February 3. There has to be some kind of help?”

More tributes have also been voiced to Jason McKay from the Portrush area, who died on Sunday; the authorities are probing whether he was killed by carbon monoxide from an electricity generator.

UUP North Antrim MLA Colin Crawford said: “Jason’s love for his family, his strong work ethic, and his commitment to his community and organisations like Dunseverick LOL 528 will always be remembered. It is clear from the many tributes shared that he was a man deeply loved and respected by all who knew him.”