28/10/2013 South Today

power cuts to thousands of homes. Now we can join the news

Hello, I'm Sally Taylor. Welcome to South Today. In tonight's programme:

it was horrendous to see it. Debris, damage, delays as the worst

storm in years hits the South. Trees on the line cause problems for

commuters getting to work. And thousands in the region are still

without power. Falling trees have been causing big opens with the

power network. Here in Dorset and elsewhere engineers have been

battling to reconnect people, but they are still quite a way to go.

Also tonight, the world famous Basingstoke brand that made it big

thanks to sheep's wool and sharp eyes.

And where will it all end? Ricky rockets Saints to another Premier

League win. It was one of the worst storms to

hit Britain in years, although it was well forecast it's still left

its mark. Tens of thousands of homes were left without power. Thousands

of trains were cancelled, leaving commuters stranded. It was trees on

the line that accounted for most of those cancellations, in all,

hundreds were brought down. The ferocious winds have caused

structural damage to property and cars. Torrential rain has also

weakened the ground with a number of landslips. Work is now well underway

to get the South moving again. But many homes are still without power

tonight. Steve Humphrey is in Wimborne in Dorset for us, Steve.

People here in Dorset are amongst those who have been badly affected

by power cuts. A positive region 110,000 homes were without power at

one stage `` across the region. 10,000 in Dorset. And near here some

villages still don't have power. Southern Electric is trying to

reconnect people as quickly as possible but the storm did cause an

awful lot of damage, 1100 engineers are out on the road, 200 of those

have come from Scotland. We caught up with one team, falling trees had

put down a long stretch of cable. We are carrying out the repairs to one

section, walking along the line and finding another fault. The engineers

are making great progress, we have got much to weather conditions than

last night, which is ideal for our engineers and they are making great

progress. Some people will be reconnected tonight, but others will

have to wait until tomorrow. According to southern and it took of

the 110,000 customers who were without power at one stage all of

those will be reconnect it apart from roundabout 10,000. They face a

particularly difficult night. The storm struck in the middle of

the night and many people had a rude awakening. Nobody was seriously

injured in this region but there were dozens of incidents across the

South. What a night. And it was the trees,

still full of leaf, that bore the brunt. This one crashed into a

pensioner's house at Leigh Park in Havant. Luckily the tenant, who's

lived here for 30 years, had spent the night away, taking refuge at her

daughter's home nearby. We just arrived home and found this huge

tree in the garden. Absolutely horrified. The darkness was mind

blowing. Here in Christchurch, a mighty

branch ripped from a giant oak tree gave one family a horrible shock. We

work up about four o'clock, big test of wind, my daughter started

screaming saying a tree had come down and looked out the window and

there it is. It has crushed three cars. If it had been another five or

six feet longer it would have come in a Windows so we have been lucky.

`` a window. In Hythe this man had to rescue a

model plane when his shed was upended by the roots from a fallen

tree. It has always been leaning on the branches extend across the road.

They have never been pruned or anything, it is a preservation

order. I'm surprised it was just one.

A landslip, by the Weymouth relief road, brought down trees and blocked

traffic for several hours this morning. At Pagham in West Sussex,

staff at the Church Farm Holiday Village decided to move their guests

out. The forecast was saying the winds were coming stronger and

stronger, we put safety first and around 11 o'clock we made the

decision to evacuate the site. We got our doors hammered down, it was

just get out. Eventually over 100 people spent the

night in Pagham village hall nearby. In Swanage, this car was buried

under a wall which was blown down early in the morning. In Lancing,

several vehicles were crushed when a roof crashed down from an office

block housing a children's cancer charity. And a giant curtain was

completely shredded at this hangar at Bournemouth Airport. It had been

protecting the hangar during extension work. From the early hours

the clean`up crews were at work. This one dealing with trees on the

Avenue in Southampton. And these workers were clearing away a tree

which crashed down in the centre of Reading. All in all, a short sharp

shock for the South, but mercifully no`one seriously hurt. Roger Finn

for BBC South Today. While travel on major roads, ferries

and air services was quickly back to normal, the storm brought a

particular headache for rail passengers. It was because of scenes

like this, a signal destroyed by a tree as it fell across the track

near Fareham, and another train going nowhere near Alton. Workers

were working all day to clear dozens of trees from other lines. While

some trains are running now other services remain suspended or

significantly reduced. Some commuters in Southampton gave up

altogether. I was supposed to be working from

Reading but I have been relocated to Southampton. It is the first day of

my new job which isn't a very good start. I have had to take annual

leave because I cannot get into work and is no point going in. It is a

delay in the morning, I don't know what will happen in the evening. We

share our customers frustration in what must have been a difficult day

to day. We have done our best in organising hundreds of engineers to

get the railway open and running as best we can.

Our transport correspondent Paul Clifton is here, the shutdown of

almost the entire rail network here is without precedent.

The threat of strong winds has never before led to the closure of the

railway as a precaution, a decision taken the day before the storm

arrived. Network Rail came in for a lot of criticism. In the south,

hundreds of thousands of commuters were unable to get to work. But half

of all the trees that fell on Britain's railway today were on

South West Trains routes. Trains sent out to test the lines got

stuck. And the bottom line is that nobody has been hurt on the railway.

I think this decision will be seen as the right one. But First Great

Western managed to run quite a lot of trains?

It ran as close to a normal service as possible, but with delays and

cancellations. It's easier to keep a diesel railway running than the

electric lines where falling debris damages the power supply. South West

Trains, Southern and First Capital Connect ran no services at all until

lunchtime. It has been challenging. The good news is we have got most of

our customers where they wanted to go, some pretty horrendous weather

overnight, we have had to work hard with Network Rail to deal with that,

we have had to clear trees away, make sure the railway is safe to run

on. And things still aren't back to

normal this evening? Some trains are running this

evening. But not many, maybe half the normal service, at best. This

has led to some awkward situations, very few flights from Gatwick were

cancelled, yet there were no trains all morning from the airport.

Salisbury didn't see a London train until late this afternoon. Tomorrow

most lines should have a near`normal timetable.

Joining me in the studio now is Ian Hoult, the man in charge of

Hampshire's emergency planning who worked through the night at the

county's control centre. I know you haven't had any sleep so thank you

for coming in. Did it go as planned? It wasn't as bad as we expected

earlier on. But the response was a good one, we were able to get out,

not all have been dealt with. You work with many different agencies,

are you disappointed the electric companies haven't managed to get

everybody back in? Of course we are. In an ideal world everybody would be

back with power and light and everything else but unfortunately

they haven't been able to effect that yet. After 1987 have you been

able to apply what you learnt them for this scenario? Of course. Any

time we have an emergency we learn the lessons. Extra and we have a

similar situation we will be able to do it better. `` next year. Some

people were saying the Met office were overcautious but that work to

your advantage? Very much so. The messages we were getting on Friday

were this could be as bad as 1987. We made sure we were fully prepared

for the worst case scenario. What we have wasn't as bad as that, we were

able to scale things down and that is much easier than it being worse

and having to scale things up. If you look at what has happened this

time, is anything in particular you know you could have done better? It

worked pretty well. The real secret to success is the multi`agency

partnership working. All of them working together. You could bring

more people together to do that but it worked pretty well.

Please go and get some sleep. Still to come in this evening's

South Today: The world famous Basingstoke brand that made it big

thanks to sheep's wool and sharp eyes.

Police in West Sussex are still hunting a man after a woman was

raped early on Sunday morning. A 25`year`old woman was walking along

Littlehampton road in Worthing just after 1am when she began talking to

a man. She was attacked in an alleyway. Detectives are urging

anyone with information to come forward.

A Poole engineering company is about to complete a first, as it begins to

move the largest machine its ever manufactured to China. The machine

will make wing components for new aircraft in Shanghai. The contract

worth over ?1.6 million to AIC will need to be transported in ten

lorries. The company says it's very proud to have won the contract.

We were at a trade show in Birmingham, and the customer came

and found us, they had been hunting is down having seen reports of what

the machine was capable of doing, and ask just to come over to

Shanghai agent need to discuss the process, because it was solving a

particular process with their composite processing. It was nice to

be invited over and eventually be successful in winning this order.

Campaigners against the biomass plant in Southampton have said they

are in limbo after the latest deadline for a planning application

past. The company was due to submit a plan

for the ?300 million woodfired power station at the end of last week. The

application has not been progressed. One camp enter `` one campaigner has

accused the company of dragging its heels. The energy company has set

will be an application in due course.

Every child in Reading could be given ?10 by the time they reach

their 10th birthday and a plan under consideration by the town 's

counsel. Authority would have to spend an estimated ?16,000 to fund

the proposal for the next school year. The money would be put into a

credit union account, the aim being to teach union `` children about

saving money. Burberry, B, Rolls Royce and Lush.

They're all British brands which are enjoying global success and they've

all got an important link to the South. This week David Allard is

exploring the stories behind the brands starting with the fashion

chain Burberry. In recent years it's shaken off its

chav tag to become one of Britain's biggest exports, currently valued at

?7 billion. But it all started when a young man opened a shop in

Basingstoke in 1856. This is the image of Burberry today,

a British heritage brand, that's one of the world's most successful

fashion labels. But Burberry owes its success to a discovery made by

this man almost 150 years ago. Thomas Burberry trained as a country

draper. In 1856, at the age of 21, he opened this clothing emporium in

Winchester Street, Basingstoke. He sold functional garments for farmers

and sportsmen. This is the sort of thing the ordinary working man would

have won out in the fields. It is an agricultural smock. This would have

gone on over his clothing. Then came the big great three. They noticed

the oil of sheep 's wool would make socks waterproof. He found a way of

waterproofing the yarn and then weaving that yarn into a cotton

cloth, which he waterproof again. That was the foundation of his

fortune. Sample books were sent by post to

wealthy gentlemen who started to place orders for their coats, made

at Burberry's factory in Basingstoke. Burberry sent his son

to London to take orders for comments made of the new material.

And here we have got one of the early coats. It was made in about

1910. We are moving towards the outbreak of the great War. The War

office commissioned him to make a coat the officers could wear and

they came back with a trench coat. Half a million of those were made

here in Basingstoke. Absolutely. The great shame is we don't have one in

the collection. It would be really nice to find one and we could use,

especially for the anniversary of the First World War next year.

This was also the age of adventure. Explorers like Scott, Amundsen and

Shackleton were in a race to reach the South Pole. But there was no

competition over who made their expedition gear. Scott and

Shackleton both commissioned Burberry to make them garments to

wear to the topic `` Antarctic. Shackleton posed for Thomas Burberry

wearing his kit. In 1919, aviators Alcock and Brown

wrote to Burberry after making the first transatlantic flight. Their

landing in Ireland was a bit bumpy but they reported they'd been warm,

dry and comfortable. Back in Basingstoke there'd been plenty of

drama too. They show the fire in the shop in 19 five and the place was

devastated. `` 1905. The shop was rebuilt and the

Burberry family empire continued to thrive. Today that original shop is

a cafe, a regular haunt for historian Hannah Williams who's

passionate about Basingstoke's Burberry connection. This is the

truth. I am glad to see them so happy. They were always proud to be

known as the Burberry girls. One of them turned up to the unveiling. We

put up 22 plaques around Basingstoke, you have to cherish

every little bit. One of the factory workers was Hilda

Applin. In 1922, at the age of 14, she joined Burberry as an

apprentice. You did the garment from start to finish. It was quite

expensive, if you want one you were somebody. What Taliban was Thomas

Burberry? Initially for the time he was a kind man `` what kind of man.

Modern lighting said the girls working at these wood benches with

her sewing machines would have had as good a right as you could have

got for the time. Thomas Burberry died in 1926. His

simple grave in Basingstoke belies his impressive legacy. From the age

of empire through the decades that followed Burberry has evolved, it's

weathered knocks to its image to become one of the quintessential

British brands. And it all started in Basingstoke.

So much I didn't know. Wonderful. The story of Burberry, which played

a big role in the First World War. So, can you help with the appeal we

heard in that film? Do you or your family have an original World War I

trench coat somewhere? In whatever condition? Would you be willing to

loan it to Hampshire Museums? If so, we'd love to hear from you.

First World War trench coat, you heard all about it in the film.

On to sport. An incredible weekend, not just the storm. Rickie Lambert

is doing the business. Hampton. I was coming back from Reading on

Saturday night and listening to the commentary, and the first 45 minute

Southampton put together was the best 45 minutes of football he has

seen from the team since they went to the St Mary's Stadium, over a

decade. It was that good. Saints destroyed Fulham in a superb first

half display at St Mary's on Saturday. It lifted them to third in

the league, for about 24 hours. This is a team absolutely top of their

game right now. A nicely worked corner set up Rickie Lambert,

recalled to the side for the first goal. The only thing Jay Rodriguez

didn't get right here was the finish. But Rodriguez made amends

when Lambert set him up for the second. Bravery from Rodriguez. Only

the scoreline wasn't emphatic. I think everything from the word go,

good momentum, a couple of relatively early goals. We instilled

that into our performance. Office Lee everybody knows how we play, we

showed everybody how good we can be `` obviously.

Into the Football League now and the main talking points.

Millwall are normally once known as the Lions and certainly Reading

needed more bite on Saturday. Sean Morrison's goal should have put them

on the way. They hit the post as well. That would prove costly, even

with ten men and a goal disallowed, Millwall won a penalty and in

stoppage time appoint through Liam Trotter. `` one point. Bournemouth

had been doing pretty well of late but trip to Leicester was always

good to be tough. David Nugent didn't do this too often in

Portsmouth shirt. 1`0 18 minutes in. The goal of the game came from Mark

Pugh. The great finish from 25 yards. The flag stays down here, and

this is the winning goal, the corner flag takes the battering in the

celebration. The Cherries suffered a third red card. Portsmouth remain in

the bottom half. Guy Whittingham and hailed their spirit. That is the

equaliser nine minutes from time. Brighton play Watford in the

championship this evening. There was no FA Cup fairy tale for Hartley

Wintney football club they were knocked out for the fourth

qualifying round by Daventry on Saturday. But, as we take a look at

the first round draw, it's worth taking note of Poole Town. The

Southern League Premier Division club held Staines Town to a goalless

draw, setting up tomorrow's replay at the Tatnam ground. The winners

will go to Brentford in the first round proper. Salisbury also

guaranteed their place in the first round.

London Irish were narrowly beaten 13`11 by Newcastle in rugby's

premiership yesterday, tomorrow the club are set to make a major

announcement. Australian international James O'Connor is set

to be unveiled as their new signing. O'Connor is one of the top talents

in the game but has a poor disciplinary record, and was

recently axed from the Australian set up. Irish will hold a press

conference at ten o'clock tomorrow. The biggest Great South Run so far

took place in windy conditions in Portsmouth yesterday. The African

runners weren't put off, Kenyan Emmanuel Bett was the first elite

male across the line in just over 48 minutes, fellow countrywoman

Florence Kiplagat won the women's race. 25,000 others braced the

conditions, many of them raising funds for good causes. It was hard,

the last two miles really hard. Hard going. I was getting blown

backwards. Just had to keep going. Decent weather, dropping the wind a

great supporters as ever. The greatest ten mile race in the world.

That is why I come back and do it every year.

Basingstoke Bison have moved up to second in the Premier league ice

hockey table It follows their victory over Guildford Flames last

night. Joe Miller scored twice as the Bison

leapfrogged their opponents in the table and completed a weekend win

double after Saturday's 7`5 win at Slough. Meanwhile Worthing Thunder

claimed their third win of the season on the basketball court. They

overturned a 12 point deficit to beat Leeds 72`71, Rory Spencer top

scored with 23 points. Good start.

I can hear you now, my ears have just popped, I can hear you.

Onto the weather. My goodness, that was really bad. I got quite scared.

This money about 5:30am. I could feel it. `` this morning.

A bit of a sting in the tail. Let's take a look at these pictures. The

rain moved in ahead take a look at these pictures. The

rain moved of the Atlantic from five o'clock. You can see a rise in

temperatures. At 5am the sting jet occurred where fast`moving car from

high up in the atmosphere propelled itself to the ground causing some

strong wind gusts. The storm developed over the North Sea today,

into the Mark 150 miles an hour `` in Denmark. Some interesting

pictures. Naomi Ridgeon took this picture last night of the large

waves at Mudeford Quay. This picture was sent in from the Needles Park by

Jeremy Cangialosi after a wind gust of 99 miles per hour was recorded

earlier this morning. No school today, good job it was

half term. This picture of a blocked Old Odiham Road in Alton was taken

by Jos Sainsbury. Quite a pitcher for the next few

days, rain showers at times. Cruel nights, Tim Butcher take plunge. The

good news is there will be some sunshine. `` temperatures take a

plunge. By dawn most places will stay dry. 12 showers could be on the

heavy side. `` temperatures can stop. A cold start tomorrow. A

breezy day tomorrow, but not as Wendy is the last 24 hours `` windy.

Predominantly dry without sunshine. A high just love the seasonal

average. Clear skies, a quiet night tomorrow, long wind. Temperatures

will fall away to single figures. There may be a touch of Frost in the

country. We are expecting Wednesday to start off on a dry note. This

low`pressure will push in a weather front around the bombing to early

afternoon. Marching across much of the region. With it there will be a

squeeze on the isobars, increasing westerly wind. Rain later on

Wednesday, should clear by the early hours. One to isolated showers.

Thursday, some showers, Friday mainly dry. The breeze will increase

throughout the week. If you want to know more about the storm through

the early hours of the morning there are some videos on the BBC website.

Just to let you know Inside Out will be investigating the extreme weather

conditions. That is it from us, ceremony lovely

pictures. Thank you for all of them. We will show some now. We will leave

you with the impact of storm Saint Jude. Good night.