20,000 homes without power as more storms to batter Sydney
More than 20,000 homes across Sydney and the Central Coast are still without power after severe thunderstorms lashed the state at the weekend — and there is still more wild weather on its way this week.
More than 20,000 homes across Sydney and the Central Coast were still without power on Sunday night after severe thunderstorms lashed the state at the weekend — and there is still more wild weather on its way this week.
Some homes are expected to be without electricity until midweek with emergency services and power providers working feverishly to fix the damage from Saturday’s wild storms. Winds continued to hamper their efforts on Sunday.
Since Thursday, The State Emergency Service has received 7000 calls for assistance, with wind gusts of nearly 100km/h wreaking havoc.
There were 2000 calls for help on Saturday after trees crushed homes (like the one pictured below) and fell on cars and power lines, causing widespread outages.
Endeavour Energy said there had been 150,000 interruptions to its customers’ power in the past four days.
SES volunteers were frantically working on Sunday to fix damaged roofs and fences, with more rain predicted on Monday. The northwest of Sydney was one of the hardest hit areas on Saturday, with the SES fielding 640 calls for help at West Pennant Hills alone.
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A family’s pergola was ripped from its base and sent flying into a neighbouring backyard, completely smashing a glass pool fence.
“It was probably the quickest and fastest and most ferocious storm I’ve seen in the time I have been in Australia,” Neelan Tandon said.
Last night, the SES still had officers slated to attend 1450 outstanding jobs.
Ausgrid said 13,000 homes were without power last night while Endeavour Energy, which covers much of Western Sydney, had 6800 homes still blacked out.
More than 55,000 homes were without power at the height of the outage on Sunday.
Residents in Carlingford were told their power won’t be restored until 3pm Monday.
Endeavour was working to fix 600 electrical hazards on Sunday while Ausgrid was working to fix 500 hazards.
SES Media Officer Phil Schafer said The Hills, Hornsby, Parramatta, Campbelltown and Heathcote were the worst affected areas.
“We have a lot of crews out there, our incident management team are working on the jobs we’ve got, everyone is on their toes,” he said.
The thunderstorm activity was a product of a large moist air mass over the NSW east coast, which has brought the muggy conditions.
Bad weather could return from Monday with rain a possibility for most of the week. There is a top of 29C forecast for Sydney today and 27C for Monday.
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