Herts highways teams tackle more than 1,000 incidents in wake of Storm Ciara

Herts County Council highways teams were deluged with 914 fault reports throughout the weekend as Storm Ciara raged.

Of those, 500 were about fallen trees and branches. By late Monday morning (Feb 10), the numbers had risen to 1,000 reports, including 632 about trees.

On a normal weekend, the teams would expect to receive around 100 reports.

Additional front-line resources were called in to ensure that all main routes were passable ahead of Monday morning's rush hour and teams worked through the day and night to clear fallen trees.

A spokesman said: "It's also likely that in some parts there may be some remaining debris still left on roadside verges for later collection. This may look untidy in some places but this will be cleared up once the priority incidents have been dealt with.

"The A10 viaduct (Hertford/Ware) was closed on Sunday afternoon and into the evening at the request of the police, due to safety concerns."

Herts Fire and Rescue Service control handled more than 130 calls relating to the storm over the weekend, with 39 of these being passed to highways to deal with.

The most significant incident was a roof blown off flats in Harpenden. Fire and rescue crews attended 31 incidents where they believed there was a risk to life, but very few resulted in injury.

No schools, libraries or waste and recycling centres were closed as a result of the storm.