Drivers do battle with white-out
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
THE worst blast of winter weather the far north has seen resulted in a spate of accidents, major delays in journeys and hundreds of households losing power.
Police attended eight accidents on Wednesday as drivers endured white-out conditions due to blizzards which affected many parts of the north Highlands.
A motorist was taken to Caithness General Hospital when he suffered a head injury after being involved in a four vehicle collision at Navidale brae, north of Helmsdale. Emergency services from Caithness and Sutherland were scrambled after the early afternoon accident involving two lorries, a pick-up truck and a van. A police spokesman said an ambulance ferried one man to the hospital where he received treatment for a head injury, which was not serious.
The road was closed for over four hours while emergency services dealt with the accident.
A spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service confirmed that everyone else involved escaped unhurt.
"A number of ambulances
attended the accident but after everyone had been assessed only one motorist needed to be transported to hospital."
Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue sent out four crews from Lybster, Wick, Helmsdale and Golspie but a spokesman said no-one had been trapped in their vehicles.
He said: "We had four fire crews at the scene but they were only there to assist in the safety of other motorists and to assist the ambulance service in helping the casualty to hospital in Wick." Hours earlier, traffic in both directions was disrupted after two lorries jack-knifed at Berriedale and Navidale at 1pm but both were back on the road within an hour.
Wick Police Station duty sergeant Ross Robertson said officers were called out to eight accidents in Caithness caused by the white-out conditions. Four of the mishaps occurred between Latheron and Berriedale. He said: "Police officers were kept busy throughout Wednesday attending accidents and jack-knifed lorries, but there were no serious injuries as a result of any of the incidents."
A car lost control on the A836 Thurso to Castletown road at Murkle when it landed into the garden of a property at 11.55am. A lorry also jackknifed on the A9 on the Causewaymire near Latheron at 7.10pm. A breakdown crew recovered the vehicle which was back on the road later that evening.
Travellers experienced significant delays because of the road conditions and the obstructions.
Scottish Hydro reported a fault in the power system affected 235 customers in Lybster and Thrumster at 7.15pm due to a high-voltage wire coming down due to freezing ice which broke the power line, with some households waiting until 4am to have power restored.
Ferry services between Caithness and Orkney were affected with Pentland Ferries cancelling all sailings between Gills Bay and St Margaret’s Hope on Wednesday.
Northlink Ferries did manage to operate its sailings between Scrabster and Stromness though the services were delayed.
The Met Office said that the worst of the winter weather had now passed and that Caithness could expect to see much milder conditions over the weekend with temperature expected to reach as high as nine degrees Celsius on Saturday.
TRUNK ROAD OPERATOR FACES FLAK OVER GRITTING POLICY
A CAITHNESS motorist whose car skidded while travelling south during the early hours has blasted Scotland Transerv for following orders from its base in Inverness rather than from a local source.
James Collier claims decisions about the deployment of gritters in the far north should be made by people on the ground.
The 32-year-old UHI student, works as a customer advisor at Asda in Tain three days a week as well as studying at Inverness, said that driving on the A9 in the early hours of morning has proven a hazardous activity.
On his first day of work at the supermarket at the end of last year, he said his car skidded at Latheron on a section of untreated, icebound road.He said this winter, he has had at least three similar experiences. The last was when he was travelling south on Thursday last week.
He is now calling on Scotland Transerve to make decisions at a local level or give up their contract for the safety of early morning motorists.
"I contacted them after the first time and they told me that they could only send out the gritters on orders from Inverness or by the police," he said.
"On the occasions I did skid, they were not told to go out by either and if I had not been driving sensibly, the consequences could have been much worse.
"Unless they are willing to change the way they operate, they should be forced to give up the contract to a local company who can monitor the weather and make sensible decisions about when the roads should be gritted."
"Between Lybster and Wick, there can be a two degree difference so there is a need for local judgement on gritting as you can’t tell what it is really like up here from Inverness."
Scotland Transerv was yesterday unavailable for comment.
