08/12/2011 Newsnight Scotland

We are treating the tumour instead Tonight on Newsnight Scotland:

60,000 homes still without power, schools closed and widespread

damage. Today's storm has been felt across the country. We'll have a

detailed look at the day's events, and we'll hear from the Deputy

First Minister on how we've coped. Good evening. Tonight, the wind is

still howling, roads remain closed and thousands are without power.

But we can't say we weren't warned. Many local authorities took the

decision to close schools yesterday and people were sent home from work

before the storm peaked. Have lessons been learned from last

year's snow? Derek Bateman looks It has been the day of the red

alert. The highest level of warning, extreme weather on the way. That

meant extreme gales and destruction. Poor driving conditions and

terrible weather. We have had gusts in the central belt upwards of 80

mph. Significant disruption and very difficult conditions. Police

advised, no trouble. The Forth and Erskine bridges were closed. This

road was blocked in both directions as a result of fallen trees.

Several hundred vehicles were stationary on the road. Many roads

were closed by flooding and fallen trees.

From Humphreys to Argyll, thousands lost their power supply. --

Humphreys. Train lines were closed and 63 passengers were stranded on

a train. Flights were disrupted and hospital clinics closed. But this

was VE Day when a year of planning came into play. Cast your mind back

to last December. Scotland gripped by a carpet of snow which brought

main trouble corridors to a standstill for our was. Families

slept in their cars, awaiting rescue. And minister resigned. The

new regime has stockpiled salt, has convoys of gritters and has met

during the night with advice from police and meteorologists to ensure

that all that can be done will be an to have a ready made answer for

critics who say, you were unprepared. There is a more robust

communication system. The entire school system in Glasgow was caused,

a situation relate to parents by a text message. -- relaid. Other

councils did the same under the instruction of the government.

Others said they would close at noon. Workplaces ended early. Many

sent staff home as soon as they arrived. The FX on the economy were

greater than the public sector strike last week. But did we over-

react? Was it reasonable to close schools or was it a health and

safety induced panic? If they have been an under reaction, people

would be queuing up to criticise. We had information from the experts,

at the Met Office and the police. It was appropriate got us to act in

the way that we did. And the forecast is a government determined

not to be blown off course again by bad weather.

I'm joined by our weather presenter Christopher Blanchett and from

Edinburgh by the Met office's Chief advisor to the Scottish government

Alex Hill. Christopher, just put today into some kind of context. We

have seen some extraordinary scenes in that report. How extraordinary

it a day had it been? Extraordinary, as you have said, but in essence it

was a winter storm. What was different was the location. The

winds channelled through a highly populated areas. -- highly. Most

people would have noticed big red sign suddenly popping up. Explain

assistant to us. The colour coded warnings are relatively new. They

are designed around the essence of impact. So before, we used to talk

about wind speeds reaching a certain level and therefore it

could trigger a warning. Now if it reaches a certain level of, the

warning is not automatically triggered, but they look at where

the wind speeds will hit. The red warning was issued today because of

the speeds and vocation. Last Jeb we saw wind speeds in the Shetlands

very similar to today. And how many of these warnings can we expect?

They take a lot of care about issuing these red warnings because

they are the highest they can issue. Usually there are one or two a year.

Alex, did today pan out as you expected? Pretty much so, as far as

the weather was concerned. It was almost spot on. I don't want to

gloat about it. You are only as good as your last forecast. I think

it is a case of we got this one generally right. Right place, right

severity and we can be fairly comfortable with what we said.

time last year, you were on this programme and other programmes

saying we warned you about the snow and it didn't work out the way

people had expected. What was different this time? What is

different is the work that has been done over the year. It is

tremendous to see organisations working together. We have had

multi-agency response teens getting data all the time. We have had

feedback from the Met Office as well. When you put the expertise in

weather together with the expertise on the impact of what er, do you

get this kind of result. You get people that are saved, transport

organisations that know what they are doing, the police are up to

date, by organisations are up to date, the NHS is up-to-date,

utilities are kept on. It is this combination, putting together quips

of expertise together. -- groups. It has been a great success. Do you

think there was complacency beforehand? I don't think so. None

of us truly understood what the various in packs would come in and

there was a tendency for us to be reactive instead of proactive. The

difference between now and not just last year, but the last five years,

is that we are more pro active in giving information. The early

warnings it you heads up to think about what is happening. As you get

closer to an event you can become more aware of what when and why.

People did react. The man in the streets set, I will have a day at

home today. I will not drive on the road. Was there an over reaction?

Today we have seen an effective system. Maybe it was too effective.

Economically, if there were lots of these days, it could be damaging.

Was it appropriate today. Absolutely. If we did not do

anything... I am not suggesting that. It is difficult to know what

would have happened if people did not take the action we suggested

they take. The way things stand, we got through this. It looks as if

there has been no loss of life or serious injury. Yes, there has been

an economic cost, but there has not been at cost to life or limb and

that is the most important thing. These extra make weather events are

quite common now. -- extraordinary. One sort of winter should we be

expecting? At the moment, it is a quiet weekend. We have got standard

stuff. We are watching the beginning of next week, Tuesday

night possibly. The bulk of the strong winds will be over England

and Wales. It is a little bit early to be more precise. What about the

longer term? We look up to the end of the mob in some kind of detail,

but even that, I would not be putting out scare stories at this

stage. Standard winter, let us be ready for it. And top lessons, in

terms of what happened today? get the information about, people

take notice and react and stay safe. That is the most important thing of

all. Thank you. A little earlier I spoke to the Deputy First Minister

Nicola Sturgeon, who has been running the Scottish government's

response to this extreme weather. Although we still have heavy winds

across the central belt, they have been easing. The winds are moving

northwards. The police have no travel advice warnings in place

until tomorrow morning. It is also likely the temperatures will be

lower elsewhere. There is a risk of snow, perhaps blizzard conditions.

We continue to monitor the situation clearly. This evening I

have had it resilience meeting of the Scottish government and the

next meeting at ministerial level will take place at 8:30am tomorrow

morning. There are still tens of thousands of people without power.

When can those communities expect to be connected to the group once

We discussed this earlier this evening. At that time there were

16,000 people between Scottish Power and Scottish Electricity

customers who didn't have power. It's important to understand the

electricity companies themselves today have been frustrated by the

high winds. Obviously, they have to think of the safety of those

working for them. They're working extremely hard to get people

reconnected. They have lots of resources. They have additional

resources from south of the border working on this. The estimate

earlier on was that Scottish Power hoped to have everybody reconnected

by late tomorrow afternoon. Scottish and Southern Energy may

take into Saturday, but obviously they'll be working as hard as

possible to accelerate it. That'll be one of the issues we continue to

monitor into tomorrow. This time last year there was a struggle to

deal with the snow conditions in Scotland. Things seem to have

worked out much better today. What lessons have you learned from last

year? The weather last year and the weather today was exceptional, and

it's circumstances beyond our control, but many lessons were

learned from the experience last year, and I think that has stood

all of us in good stead today. We have been battered by the winds

today. This is only the third time in ten years that we've seen the

kind of wind speeds that we've experienced today. There has been

widespread disruption. There still is for very many people,

particularly those we have just been talking about without

electricity. People have been inconvenienced for a whole variety

of reason, but I think in all the circumstances, Scotland has coped

today as well as could have been expected. That's down to the

efforts of very many people working in our emergency services and

transport companies, but it's also down to the patience, the

forebearence and the willingness of the public to heed the advice being

given. Communication was key. It was interesting, yesterday some

local authorities were deciding to shut their schools early. Others

waited until they were instructed by the police and the Scottish

Government. Doesn't that suggest there is still a need foreeven

greater coordination? Advice was issued last night to local

authorities. There weren't instructions given ultimately for

local authorities to decide whether schools open or close. We issued

that advice last night based on the information we were given at a 9.30

resilience meeting by both the Met Office and the police. That advice

was communicated to local authorities, and local authorities

took the appropriate action. I think given the experience today,

the decision that was made and the action the local authorities took

turned out to be the right decisions. Part of the reasons we

have coped as well as could have been expected today is the right

decisions were taken at the right time. We'll seek to continue to do

this while this weather lasts. you have any estimate on how much

this will ultimately cost the Scottish economy? Because we have

had such massive disruption to such key elements of the national

infrastructure, not the least the Forth Bridge, the roads and rail

network? I am sure estimates will emerge over the next few days. As

you can appreciate, our focus today has been ensuring we can cope with

the conditions we face. Absolutely, many employers were rightly

allowing their staff to go home early. Obviously, there were

widespread school closures, the bridge closures and all the other

disruption will have had an impact on the economy today, but the

decisions that were being taken today were being taken for the

right reasons, with safety our paramount condition. I am satisfied

we took the appropriate conditions. That's what we'll seek to continue

to do. You talked about last year's events being exceptional and this

year's events being exceptional. We keep on getting what are

exceptional weather events. How prepared are you as a government to

continue to be surprised in future months and years? I think we have

to be ready for whatever the weather throws at us. The weather

is beyond the control of any government, but what is not beyond

our control is to be as prepared as we possibly can be. We've got

robust systems in place over the course of today, although I don't

estimate for a second the degree of inconvenience that has been

suffered by people today, but nevertheless, we have coped as well

as as could have been expected because we were prepared, and we

were able to take the right decisions, and we have to make sure

that is the right decision at all times, perhaps not exclusively but

during the winter months. Not what you would normally expect to see on

Newsnight, but this hasn't been a normal day. Here's Christopher with

I thought I would start by looking back over the last 24 hours. This

is where the low pressure was sitting, the storm, in the Atlantic,

but steaming towards Scotland. During the early morning hours it

pushed in, sitting off the west coast by 9.00pm or 10.00pm. You can

see the winds whipping around the centre gusting at times up to 90mph.

That low continued to move in through the day towards the

afternoon. Notice the wind strength would have been at the height

really through the central belt because of the wind direction

coming in on a westerly breeze there, and 957, the pressure,

continually deepening and strengthening. That's when we saw

the wind gusts at their worst. They moved away towards the evening. We

saw some strong gusts today - 91 in Tiree. 81 in Prestwick. It's not

done tonight. Here it is sitting to the east of us, continuing to move

towards Scandinavia, but the sting in the tail is colder air coming

down from behind it and snow showers coming through highland

Grampian and Aberdeenshire. Storm force winds are here, gusting at 80

plus miles per hour. We have an amber warning for the snow and the

wind - treacherous driving the next couple of hours. The snow showers

fade away. In the south-west, wintry above two or 300 metre,

otherwise reasonably dry. Cold - 2- 3 Celsius. Inland areas, freezing

or just below. Tomorrow the low pressure continues to move away

towards Scandinavia, but then we open the floodgates from the north.

Very cold northerly winds sweeping in across the whole of the country.

It will be a cold day. Tomorrow morning across the south-west,

those showers continuing to be wintry, above 200 metres before

they disappear. Heavy showers into Schettlan and Orkney. Winds strong