No power for residents during heatwave

Repairs planned again this weekend, with temperatures still topping 40 degrees

Lilly Beech and Tom Daniels escaped the heat during Allenstown's power blackout. Picture: Jann Houley

LILLY Beech took her two-year old pooch Luna to the dog park to escape the heat after power to her Denham St home failed on Sunday evening.

It's an all too familiar scenario for Ms Beech and others who share a power pole on the corner of Denham St and Quarry Lane.

"I've only lived here seven months and in that time the power's gone off three of four times," Tom Daniels said.

The supply went down at least three times in Allenstown on Sunday as Ergon crews attended to the scene into the night.

Those who watched the Ergon power outage app on their mobile phones saw the red tags spread from 108 residents in Allenstown to Port Curtis to Gracemere in a matter of minutes.

Ergon installed a generator in Kerr Park on Sunday. Picture: Jann Houley

Curiously, there is one house on that Denham St stretch which remains on the grid as all its neighbours lose power.

"When I got home from the dog park and the power went down again, my neighbour invited me to make use of her spa," Ms Beech said.

Next morning, residents woke to find a generator in Kerr Park which seems to be keeping their lights and fans going through Rockhampton's week-long heatwave.

Yesterday they received a notice in their mailboxes that the power will be cut from Allenstown homes for up to six hours this Sunday.

Ergon representative Ty Marega said its operations people were unavailable to comment as they were "absolutely flat-out managing the emergency response to the fires threatening our customers and network infrastructure in the Deepwater and Baffle Creek areas."

Residents are not looking forward to another hot weekend without electricity and hope that Sunday's repairs will end their perennial problems with power supply in that area.

Originally published as No power for residents during heatwave