Households face blackouts to shore up hospitals’ power supply during pandemic
Another 6000 Sydney homes will be without power this week as critical upgrades are undertaken to secure power to major hospitals and aged care facilities ahead of the coronavirus peak.FIND OUT WHERE OUTAGES WILL BE
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Another 6000 Sydney homes will be without power this week as critical upgrades are undertaken to secure power to major hospitals and aged care facilities ahead of the coronavirus peak.
The Daily Telegraph revealed last week that Ausgrid was embarking on a program or urgent upgrades and maintenance amid fears the electricity supply was not sufficiently reliable enough to some major health facilities, particularly if the Ausgrid workforce was impacted by the virus.
This results in thousands of outages ranging up to 13 hours at a time around the city, but many are much shorter - a little as one hour.
Today, The Daily Telegraph can reveal Ausgrid workers have been subject to shocking abuse in the course of doing the work with many clients working from home.
“In some instances we are seeing threatening behavior to our field workers on the ground and in customers service - that’s just disappointing and un Australian,” Ausgrid chief Trevor Armstrong said.
“Our teams are doing an incredible job, working around the network to fix problems that could later become too difficult to resolve quickly.”
“We have one main goal and that’s the security of power supply for everyone in a very uncertain time.
“Please, don’t take it out on our staff. They are experiencing the same family and social pressures and changes we are all grappling with, and they are still putting the community first, coming to work and doing what needs to be done.”
An outage on Danger Road at Randwick is due today to undergo critical work to secure power supply in the area including to a local nursing home.
Abuse has been directed at Ausgrid staff, which has been documented and supplied to The Daily Telegraph.
This includes comments such as “I hope you and your family get COVID and die” and “I wish I could cough on you right now”. Staff have also been threatened with being spat on while working on the ground.
All customers which will experience outages this week have been notified in advance and told every effort will be made to make outages as short as possible.
Originally published as Households face blackouts to shore up hospitals’ power supply during pandemic