21st of Nov 2008

ENERGEX crews restore power after another night of wild weather

ENERGEX crews have restored power to almost 80,000 homes and businesses across South East Queensland following another night of wild weather.

Hundreds of ENERGEX staff spent the night in the field and in regional operational centres, network control rooms and in the customer contact centre.

In total some 90,000 lightning strikes were recorded by the GPATs system yesterday as storms crossed Queensland with some of these strikes along with gale force winds, extensive hail and localised flooding affecting ENERGEX’s power network.

Few areas of South East Queensland missed out on last night’s storms with significant power interruptions from the Gold Coast in the south through to Gympie in the north. More than 1400 separate repair jobs or requests for assistance were carried out by crews across the region.

Despite the ferocity of the weather just 60 homes and businesses hit by last night’s storms were without power at 8am mostly due to access issues.

ENERGEX’s Mike Swanston said damage caused by the storm included fallen powerlines, trees and tree branches blown into powerlines, and water seeping into the underground electricity system.

While it’s been a busy week for ENERGEX crews, strict fatigue management practices means there were sufficient crews rested and ready to work throughout the night.

The power interruptions last night commenced just as crews were finalising the exhaustive electricity restoration effort from Wednesday’s severe storm and flooding rains and of course came on the back of Sunday’s natural disaster event, widely recognised as the most severe storm to hit the region in almost a quarter of a century.

Since Sunday more than 350,000 homes and businesses through South East Queensland have been affected by storm-related power interruptions – many of these being hit two, three or four times.

“The support of the public, and in particular the patience shown, while our crews have been restoring power has been fantastic and I know I speak on behalf of ENERGEX in thanking affected residents,” said Mike.

“But it must be remembered that we still have more storms forecast for the coming week and everyone has their part to play.”

Of special concern in the days ahead will be forecast strong winds which have the potential to snap damaged tree branches or to pick up vegetation lying around homes and throw them into powerlines.

ENERGEX’s key customer contact numbers are 13 19 62 for priority emergency situations such as powerlines down and 13 62 62 for reports or updates of power loss and restoration.

For media inquiries: Office Hours (07) 3407 4420 or After Hours (07) 3407 5191