Buderim electrical explosion impacts businesses, union calls for maintenance

Employees of a car dealership near Wednesday’s electrical explosion have spoken about the blast that shut down the street for hours.

Wises Road, Buderim Explosion

A man has described the shock of discovering a damaged footpath out the front of his car dealership after Wednesday’s electrical explosion.

Gary Hayter, service manager at Pacific Isuzu Maroochydore, was on scene as it happened yesterday morning.

The car dealership directly fronts onto the footpath where the minor underground explosion occurred.

“Emergency services responded to a reported pressured blast in the footpath on Wises Road, Buderim, about 6.45am December 11,” a Queensland Police Service spokeswoman said,

Mr Hayter was initially not aware of any problems until he noticed a fire engine arrive, with the crew telling him they were responding to reports of smoke coming from the dealership building.

After searching the building to no avail, they discovered the damage to the footpath and the source of the smoke.

The entire sales yard had to be cleared of cars once the emergency crews identified it was “a much bigger situation than we initially thought”, said Mr Hayter.

Wises Road, Buderim Explosion

Emergency services issued an exclusion zone between the Sugar Road and Wises Road roundabouts for most of the day.

Mr Hayter said this impacted the dealership as all sales and services appointments had to be postponed, and the entire day of normal business halted.

However, he said he was happy they were kept well informed by emergency services, and would like to know the risks of it happening again.

Sunshine Coast Police said it was a small explosion, enough to lift a manhole up a foot or so.

“It would be something similar to that incident on the Gold Coast,” Senior Sergeant Doolan said.

After the explosion on Sunday in Surfers Paradise injured a pedestrian, the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has demanded action by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER).

ETU Assistant State Secretary and Electricity Supply Industry co-ordinator Stuart Traill said the substation directly across the road meant cables were carrying a higher fault current.

This created a “perfect storm” for cables to blow up as the hot, moist weather combined with the extra power requirements from people running aircon put cables under “immense pressure”.

Mr Traill said a higher budget for maintenance from the AER is required to prevent this happening at other locations.

Energex teams were on site today making repairs with one lane of Wises Road closed around the works.