By KATH GANNAWAY
STORM damage to multiple powerlines throughout Toolangi and Healesville left businesses and households without power from Tuesday afternoon through to Thursday last week.
The power outages corresponded with plummeting temperatures and continuing high winds adding to the pain for the power-less, and for power suppliers who were working around the clock to deal with sustained strong winds and extreme damage to powerlines from Kinglake across to the Dandenong Ranges.
Healesville residents Christine Earl and Emma Newsome who live in Graceburn Avenue said they were without power from around 2pm on Tuesday.
“We’ve got no heating, no hot water, no lights, we’re cold and the kids have nasty coughs from sleeping in the cold,” Ms Earl said.
Going out a lot, and sitting in the car with the heater on to charge the mobile phone had become better options than sitting in a cold house, she said.
“The cold is the worst thing,” said Ms Newsome who has four children under seven years of age – all feeling the cold.
While the electricity was restored in Healesville at around lunchtime on Thursday, Jan Williams, owner of Singing Gardens Tea Rooms in Toolangi said they were still out when the Mail rang around 1pm.
“The latest we’ve been told is around 5.30pm tonight, but we’re not convinced,” Ms Williams said.
She said while they had generator back-up at the tearooms, she was expecting they would lose food stored in other freezers in the home.
“A lot of people around here have generators now, but a lot don’t and I would think a lot of people would lose freezer goods,” she said.
Ms Earl and Ms Newsome estimated they each would have lost hundreds of dollars in food spoilage.
SPAusnet spokesman Jonathon Geddes said they had between 200 and 300 crews working in the central region of the network around the clock to restore business and residential customers.
“The weather event hit around midday on Tuesday and we had strong winds again on Tuesday night causing more damage,” he said.
“In Toolangi there were multiple trees falling down over powerlines up through Kinglake and Toolangi where a mini-cyclone went through on Tuesday night, destroying kilometres of powerlines and damaging pole-top assets,” he said.
“The gusts absolutely destroyed powerlines and it’s taken a lot of work to get them reconstructed and re-energised,” he said, adding that as fast as the crews fixed one section, patrolled it and try to re-energise it, new faults were happening.
As of Thursday afternoon Mr Geddes said there were only 110 households, including some in Toolangi, still waiting for reconnection, down from 24,000 over the network.
