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South Australia hit by power outages following gale-force winds South Australia hit by power outages following gale-force winds
(35 minutes later)
Many South Australians will be waking up with out power after the same severe weather system that caused flooding in the Northern Territory travelled south. Thousands of homes and businesses in South Australia will be without power on Wednesday and Thursday, with severe weather causing outages across the state on Tuesday night.
SA Power said on Wednesday about 115,000 people were without power following gale force winds overnight, which resulted in widespread damage to the state’s electricity grid. SA Power spokesman Paul Roberts said the winds that caused 115,000 homes and business to lose power were the remnants of cyclone that crossed Australia from the Pilbara.
Paul Roberts from SA Power said despite a major response from crews, delays to the restoration of power were likely due to the extensive nature of the outages.
SA Power tweeted on Wednesday, saying some customers would be without power well into Thursday.
Widespread outages affecting 100,000 due to #SAstorm. Restoration delays likely due to extent of damage, safety, and flooding issues.Widespread outages affecting 100,000 due to #SAstorm. Restoration delays likely due to extent of damage, safety, and flooding issues.
Heavy rain, as much as 117mm, and winds up to 100km/h had hit northern parts of South Australia by Tuesday. The majority of the outages occurred between Port Augusta and Cape Jervis, including the Adelaide metropolitan area and the Adelaide Hills.
Adelaide is expected to get the bad weather by midnight, with the Bureau of Meteorology issuing a severe weather warning. Roberts said the damage was caused by strong winds, which reached speeds up to 120km per hour. The winds pulled down trees and tree limbs, which knocked over polls and downed wires.
The South Australian SES had attended to 96 calls for assistance by 10:30pm on Tuesday. “Eighty per cent of our network is overhead in South Australia and it is vulnerable to these sort of events,” Roberts said.
While winds will ease on Wednesday, showers will continue for Adelaide and could develop into thunderstorms as the high humidity continues. He said while the company was on standby for the event since the end of last week and would be deploying an immediate and large response, the nature of the event meant it could take days to restore some parts of the network.
“High winds well into this morning have prevented our crews from working and we’ve got some flooding and very wet paddocks that make it hard for the country crews to get to where the outages are,” Roberts said.
“The reality is with that many customers, that widespread nature of the event, we will have people out well into tomorrow,” he said. “Because we will find some very significant damage – there will be large trees over lines. We’ll have to get the tree removed, bring in cranes to put up poles and restring wires. These things take time.”
Roberts said that his anecdoctal experience has suggested storms like this are getting worse in South Australia.
“We’ve been having more of these significant storms in South Australia in recent years,” he said. “We’re seeing more of them into this part of summer. I’ve been with the business for nine years and it’s been in the last four or so years that we’ve been seeing more frequent significant storms.”