The Rescue Board had to extinguish eight such fires plus two more out-of-control campfires. Volunteers have been working nonstop since Saturday to clear damage, providing invaluable help, while good cooperation with local authorities has also eased crisis response.

The islands, the western coast, and northern Estonia bore the brunt of the southwesterlies, in gusts well over 30 meters per second at times, and the region was on the highest code-red level of weather warning.

Nationwide the storm led to over 14,000 power outages.

Clearing the most complicated outages in Harju County, Rapla County, and Lääne-Viru County will take until at least today, Tuesday, making for a busy time for electricity grid workers and rescue workers.

The storm has been followed by much colder weather and snow. Given the winds are still strong, this has made for blizzard-like conditions, which will hamper the recovery work and may even create new issues.

"Strong winds will continue until Monday afternoon, and if you look at the longer-range forecast, we already see that by the middle of next week heavier snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures are being predicted — so it seems there will be no chance to put our feet up yet," said Rescue Board official Viktor Saaremets.

Full-time rescue workers are invaluably aided by volunteers in the clear-up. Not only are the usual fallen trees an issue, but more pressing and serious challenges too, including even forest fires sparked by fallen power lines.

"We received a call that power lines were down and there was a fire under the forest. When we arrived, we could see from the road that the entire forest floor was burning, the whole area under the lines. We went across a field — it was a kind of clear-cut field and the trees had been chipped. When we got closer, we saw that there were three ignition points. Three lines that had fallen were throwing sparks and a fire had started. Unfortunately, at first we couldn't do anything, because the electricity was still live and kept throwing more sparks all the time," said Keila rescue station firefighter Renne Meri

lo.

Lääne-Harju mayor Jaanus Saat said a volunteer brigade was still working on the clear-up, having worked practically round the clock from the weekend.

This vicinity was the location of one of the luckier storm-related incidents. A large spruce tree in Laulasmaa, 35 kilometers west of Tallinn, was toppled just meters from a residence. However, the fallen tree only blocked the driveway and did not cause anything worse.

The number of power outages peaked around 7 a.m. on the Sunday when more than 14,000 households were without electricity.

"This storm did catch us somewhat by surprise in that we had expected the islands to suffer the most — the islands and the western coast — but in reality it is Harju County and Rapla County where there are currently the most outages and the most work," said Elektrilevi CEO Mihkel Härm.

"I would like to think that the work we have done on the islands after the major crisis in 2022 is now finally paying off," Härm added.

At the time of writing, according to Elektrilev's outages map, the number of power cuts nationwide was in the low hundreds.

Ferry connections to Hiiumaa were suspended during the storm but went back in service on Sunday afternoon.

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