Power workers have told how they fought to restore electricity after the Great Storm.

Rod Lewry, from Dover, struggled with workmates to lift a tree off power lines after the hurricane force winds 30 years ago tonight.

Mark Stevenson, of Broadstairs, worked up to 19 hours a day for a fortnight to get homes relit.

Mr Lewry says: “I remembers that the wind wasn’t gusting that night.
“It was a constant roar.

"We had never heard anything like it.

“My two daughters came into the room and we looked out of the window.

“All Dover was without electricity except a defence system on the cliff.

"That was the only place with lights.

“The next day we took a great big tree off the 33,000-volt lines to get Dover’s lights back on.

“The damage was unlike anything I have seen before or since and it’s an experience in life that I shall never forget.”

Mr Lewry was a linesman for the then electricity board Seeboard covering Dover, Canterbury and Ashford.

This year he received a certificate for 54 years of continuous service to the electricity.

Mr Stevenson, also a linesman in 1987, said: “It was terrible and we had never seen anything like it.

“There were trees down everywhere and the network was on the deck.

"We were working 18 to 19 hour days for two weeks to get people back on supply as quickly as possible.”

The Great Storm happened on the night of October 15 and 16, 1987, striking southern England and northern France.

It killed 22 people, 18 in England and four in France, and was the worst such disaster in this country since the Great Storm of 1703.

Most of the damage was between 2am and 6am on Friday, October 16, with winds reaching up to 110mph.

Two crew members of the 1,500-tonne cargo vessel Sumnia died when she lost power and struck the southern breakwater just outside Dover Harbour.

Trees fell everywhere, blocking the roads, such as a at Granville Road, Walmer, and crashing onto houses include at nearby Channel Lea.

Householder Elizabeth Maltrap escaped from her home with her life.

People throughout the district were woken up by the sound of their roof tiles smashing as they rained onto the ground, as well as the eerie roar of the wind.

A total 91 miners at the then Betteshanger Colliery were trapped underground for eight hours as power supplies were cut across Kent.

Guests all escaped unhurt when the fully-booked Bell Hotel on the Sandwich Quay was hit by high winds and large chunks of masonry fell from the nearby St Peter’s Church.

The roof at a new building on the Pfizer complex at Sandwich lift off and then settle back down in the same place.

At Hartsdown Park stadium at Margate, then home to Thanet United FC, the storm demolished two-thirds of a perimeter wall.

It also blew away one stand roof and peeled back the roof on the main stand.

Most of the clubhouse was smashed.

In Ramsgate a woman was almost killed when a chimney stack crashed through her bedroom ceiling.

Mobile homes at a caravan park in Capel-le-Ferne were flattened and the 5,500-ton Sealink ferry Hengist was hurled aground at The Warren, Folkestone.