Some children may not be able to get back into their classrooms until Monday after Storm Ciaran battered the south of England and the Channel Islands with gusts of up to 100mph and heavy rain.
Damage to properties in Jersey meant some residents had to evacuate their homes and seek refuge in a hotel, with one woman saying hailstones “bigger than a golf ball” had broken her windows.
The storm caused travel chaos and the AA, which had a large number of callouts in southern England, said it had “rescued 84 customers stuck in flood so far today, with thousands more impacted by the weather”.
By Thursday afternoon National Grid said 9,000 properties were without power in the South West.
Hundreds of schools were closed because of the risk to pupils in the south of England, but Hampshire and the Isle of Wight Local Resilience Forum (LRF) downgraded its major incident on Thursday afternoon as the area had not experienced the “full extent of the forecast weather”.
Assistant Chief Constable Paul Bartolomeo, LRF chairman, said: “While we have seen flooding of properties and roads, power outages and disruption to the highways networks caused by the wind and rain, we have thankfully not seen the full extent of the forecast weather, and we are now in a position to stand down the major incident response.”
The Government of Jersey said schools will close for a second day on Friday as they aim to get pupils back in classrooms on Monday.
In a statement it said: “Schools set to remain closed tomorrow to help assess damage and reopen roads. Some non-urgent health appointments have been cancelled.”
