PETERSFIELD and its surrounding area escaped the worst effects of the storms at the weekend, although on Friday a pair of cottages at Ramsdean were struck by lightning, and on Sunday Petersfield Golf Club found itself without most of its electrical power.

Petersfield fire crews were called to the home of Eric and Di Hickman in Ramsdean Road on Friday afternoon to find smashed tiles, a large hole in the roof, the electrical system entirely destroyed and small fires in the roof space. Fortunately no one was hurt.

ÒThere was just one clap of thunder and then an enormous bang,Ó said Mr Hickman.

ÒThe light bulbs shattered into clouds of glass, the plugs blew out of the walls and the electronics of the television, cooker and boiler were blown to bits.

ÒThe fire brigade arrived very quickly and soon made the roof weatherproof. Then about half an hour later they discovered a fire in the roof space of my neighbourÕs house, which they dealt with.

ÒThe other pair of cottages also suffered electrical damage.

ÒI cannot thank the fire brigade enough - particularly for dealing with everything so quickly - they were wonderful.Ó

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful for the Petersfield crews but Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service as a whole was very involved in dealing with the problems created by the weather.

On a normal weekend crews would attend about 130 incidents of all types, but last Saturday and Sunday they had to attend 246, of which 122 were a direct result of the weather.

General manager of Petersfield Golf Club, Richard Hine, told The Herald that the club had cancelled an event planned for Sunday because of the strong winds.

But when organisers and staff arrived at the club early on Sunday morning they were faced with widespread loss of power in the building as only one phase of the three-phase supply was functioning.

ÒWe were unable to report the power loss to Southern Electric on Sunday because their lines were blocked with calls for help,Ó said Mr Hine.

ÒWe did get through on Monday morning but it was not until the afternoon that a Southern Electric engineer arrived. Having seen our problem he left to search for the cause. We did not see him again, but we had power restored at 6-10 pm.Ó

A Southern Electric spokesman said that at the height of the storm there were about 115,000 customers in the companyÕs service area without power.

A fallen tree left 21 customers in the Petersfield area cut off for a time. A good percentage of customers had power back by Sunday evening, but on Tuesday morning there were still about 1,500 customers without electricity.

Sgt Paul Underwood of Whitehill police said the traffic division at Whitehill had some calls concerning fallen trees, particularly one on the A32 at Farringdon, which closed the road for a time. However, there was nothing major in the area and it seemed to have escaped the worst of the weather.

The Waterloo to Portsmouth railway line, in common with many others throughout the country, was shut between 10-30 am and 4 pm on Sunday. A South West Trains spokesman said this decision was taken in the interests of safety, as there were quite a few trees down.

Services were already running under a 50 mph speed limit imposed by Railtrack, and this continued when a scaled-down service of two trains an hour each way was started at 4 pm.

On Monday the 50 mph speed limit was still in force, and there were delays as a knock-on from the day before.

Matters were compounded when a vehicle hit a bridge at Vauxhall at about 3-30 pm and trains were delayed while engineers checked the bridge.

On Tuesday trains were running about 15 minutes late. as drivers struggled to cope with leaves on the track. The trees seemed to have lost most of their leaves in one go on Sunday.