Watch moment giant tree crashes through power line causing major outage in Perthshire

A family narrowly avoided sparking wires after a giant tree crashed through a power line during Storm Boelo, causing a major power outage in Perthshire.

David Lyall, his wife, and children had parked up at the Cally car park, just outside Dunkeld, and were on a walk on Sunday when they heard a tree begin to creak and saw it beginning to fall.

The tree crashed through a power line, snapping cables and sending them whipping towards the family, who were forced to run.

An outage map on the Scottish and Southern Electricity Network’s website showed a power outage affecting four postcodes in the Dunkeld area from 1.21pm on Sunday. Power in the area remains out.

David said if he and his family had been walking on the path several seconds earlier, it would have been “a different story”.

“We had just walked past where the tree fell and heard it creaking”, he told STV News. “When we got to the other side, I started filming. We ran when the wires were sparking and smoking.

“A few seconds earlier, it could have been a different story. It was very frightening.

“We called 999 once the video ended, walked into Dunkeld for a few drinks, where we found there was a power cut.

“When you check when the power outage was, it correlates with when the tree went through the cables.”

SSEN said that 76,000 customers had to be reconnected due to the outage and that around 22,000 customers remained without power on Monday.

It came as Storm Boelo sparked yellow and amber weather warnings for wind across the country, resulting in power outages and travel disruption.