THE first time I realised the scale of Storm Goretti was on Thursday morning when I got a text from Skybus to say that my flight from Gatwick that evening, for an event at home, had been brought forward by an hour because of the anticipated winds.

I happened to have a typically busy morning that day with two questions in the House, about funding for Cornish buses and Cornish schools, as well as a meeting planning for the Cornish critical minerals visit to No. 10 Downing Street this week. Sitting in the chamber, another message came through on my phone: no more trains to Cornwall after 6pm.

I quickly got to Gatwick, went through security, got called to Gate 4 and then in a slightly surreal scene, the chief executive of Skybus himself appeared to tell us all face-to-face that he had cancelled the flight home as it was already too dangerous.

Fair play to him for addressing us himself and taking questions from understandably frustrated passengers.

He explained that we’d all be booked onto the flight the following evening and complimentary hotel rooms were available. So we all trooped back through security.

The messages of the carnage being wreaked started coming in almost bang on 6pm.

Friends from Tresco were reporting quite extraordinary winds. Then all went quiet and I assume they lost power.

Social media and news outlets began to report the scale of the storm. I cannot adequately describe the feeling of utter helplessness – stuck in a faceless Gatwick hotel – hearing about the Cornish landscape being ripped to shreds. The best I thought I could do was to record a message imploring people not to go to the coast or to wooded areas and post it on Facebook. And then the rest of the evening and into the early hours was spent watching news reports and messaging friends and family to check they were safe.

In the morning, I resolved to drive home – I couldn’t wait until the evening flight. I hired a car from Gatwick airport, leaving at about 10.30am and got to Newquay airport, where I’d left my car, at about 4pm.

Outside of scheduled meetings, I spent the weekend driving around areas that were still cut off, knocking on doors to check people were okay and to make sure they were aware of the latest estimates of when power would be restored.

As power has largely returned to most places, my reflections are:

1. The one casualty is a tragedy but, given the force of Storm Goretti, it is quite remarkable that there were not more casualties.

2. Ministers are already recognising the impact of the widespread adherence to requests to stay inside that will have undoubtedly saved lives.

3. Grid resilience in Cornwall needs a serious review – it cannot be acceptable that critical infrastructure is at such risk.

4. Our mobile phone services must be urgently upgraded. My constituency ranks 613th out of 650 for mobile phone coverage – that needs to change.

5. If you hear there’s a storm brewing, get home from Westminster quicker!