ENERGY bosses have revealed that over 11,000 homes in the Scottish Borders were left without power when Storm Ali struck last week.

Winds of over 80 miles-per-hour battered the region throughout much of Wednesday.

And dozens of uprooted trees damaged power lines and blocked roads.

SP Energy Networks have revealed that across Scotland 65,000 houses were left without power - including just over 11,000 in the Borders.

With detailed preparation plans in place, engineers were able to restore power supplies to the majority before the end of the day.

The recovery work on Thursday and Friday also involved some very complex and time consuming repairs, involving tree cutting, replacement of broken poles and fallen power lines.

Fault locations were also difficult to access due to road closures and hundreds of fallen trees.

Guy Jefferson, customer service director at SP Energy Networks told us: “This is the worst September storm to hit our network in a very long time.

"Severe winds in late summer can be more problematic than a winter storm.

"Even though we can see higher wind speeds later in the year, we have never seen so many trees come down.

"With the leaves still in full bloom, the wind basically dragged the trees out of the ground, snapping our poles and bringing down wires."

Over 600 people worked on the storm response, including 100 engineers who travelled up from the North West of England and Wales.

Customer service teams were in contact with people who were off supply for an extended time to offer additional support, including generators and hot food.

And the Red Cross also supported the response, visiting about 100 vulnerable customers to issue support packs.

Mr Jefferson added: "We would like to thank customers for their patience and for the good nature they showed to our engineers and customer service teams.

"Our teams worked tirelessly to get supplies back up and running as quickly as possible.

"Some of the network was very badly damaged, and our engineers will be carrying out further patrols and permanent repair work over the course of this week.”