A house at Mudgee, central-west NSW, after a live power pole fell onto it during last week’s storms. Fire crews prevented it from spreading but couldn’t save the building, according to Fire and Rescue NSW. Photo: FRNSW.
Power has now been restored to about 300,000 homes, businesses and other properties in NSW which blacked out when severe storms swept across the state last week.
Energy repair crews and NSW State Emergency Service volunteers are working hard to connect the remaining 8600 households, the NSW Government says.
Violent electrical storms late on Wednesday, January 15, brought down trees and powerlines before gale-force winds hit on Friday, January 17.
Since Wednesday, the SES received more than 8700 call-outs, many involving live power lines, the government says.
At the height of Wednesday’s storms 226,000 customers lost power; on Friday, more than 70,000 were disconnected. Some homes and businesses were hit by both weather systems.
NSW Energy Minister Penny Sharpe says the job of restoring power is “a massive task” for SES volunteers and energy crews.
“This important but difficult work is still going,” she says.
“There are customers who are still without power, and we know that is incredibly difficult. Crews are working as hard as possible to reconnect everyone.”
Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib says government is working with councils to provide support with state-federal funding already available in some council areas.
“The NSW State Emergency Service and other first responders, including Fire and Rescue NSW, the NSW Rural Fire Service and VRA Rescue NSW, made a mammoth effort to help communities get back on their feet during these difficult times,” he says.
SITUATION REPORT
The government says that the severity of the damage caused by the two storms have sparked prolonged outages. Some required complete re-builds of parts of the network, which have taken several days to complete and some are in isolated locations.
Ausgrid is advising customers some outages will continue into early this week. Essential Energy workers are now supporting Ausgrid.
As of 6am on Monday, January 20, around 8600 homes and business across NSW were without power.
Ausgrid has 8500 customers without power with 1500 in Newcastle/Hunter (including 350 in Port Stephens), 1000 in the Central Coast and 6000 in Sydney.
More than 200,000 Ausgrid customers were affected by the storms.
Endeavour Energy has around 100 customers without power in Sydney down from 78,000 customers.
Essential Energy restored all power outages with 31,500 customers affected.
The federal and state governments have declared a natural disaster in some council areas while the state government is waiving its waste levy in those areas.
Affected customers should contact their power supplier to see if further support is available.
SAFETY TIPS
The government has issued the following safety tips:
- Always assume a fallen wire is live and dangerous and stay at least 8 metres clear of them;
- Avoid wires hanging low, on the ground or tangled in trees and storm debris;
- Never drive across fallen powerlines;
- Report fallen powerlines immediately to your electricity distributor;
- If using a portable generator, avoid deadly exhaust fumes entering your home;
If you have an emergency, call Triple 0 (000) or the Police Assistance Line on 131 444 for non-urgent matters.
